Give it a rest + answers. (Re: [Zope] Re: Zope + Apache on Quad Debian machine)

[Chris Withers]

Dario Lopez-Kästen wrote:
> <snip>
> 
> Martinj, Chris and others giving nonsential answers: Don't you guys have 
> work to do instead of playing bullies on the newbies?.

Dario, I actually think your comment here is a bit out of order if 
you're referring to this post of mine:

http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2006-March/165574.html

All I've provided there is information on a better forum to ask about 
cpu affinity and some other sources of possible slowness which might 
well be the case here.

I also don't think it's exactly fair to lump Hugo in as a newbie. He's 
been at this enough years now that he should know better...

> I see a lot of this newbie bashing increasing; in fact it has been some 
> years since the zope list was a good example on how to treat newbies 
> politely and point them to the prope answers.

In all fairness, the quality of newbies was better back then. Too many 
people come to this list nowadays asking about stuff without bothering 
to do any research and often asking about Plohn, whereas their own lists 
would be much better...

They then get arsey because people won't bend over backwards to help 
them answer the same question they asked before, even though they're not 
even paying the people they're expecting to help them.

> enough sleep, yada, yada, yada... I fail to see how that is a newbie's 
> fault, so no need to take it out on them.

It's a two way street...

> The need for threaded python processes to be CPU bound (yes, Zope is 
> threaded, in case you have forgotten) arises from the fact that python 
> has the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock).
> 
> For background see:
> 
> http://www.zope.org/Members/glpb/solaris
> 
> and
> 
> http://www.zope.org/Members/glpb/solaris/report_ps

Having chatted with both the author and the researcher of that paper, I 
don't remember the results being as clear-cut as you imply ;-)

Still, had Hugo bothered to do even some cursory googling, would he not 
have found all that information?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=zope+multi+cpu

> Regarding all other advises you have gotten so far (get more memory, 
> look at your disks, get a life, etc), I am sure that they have merits, 
> but as far as I can see, they don't actually solve anything at all.

I think you're stepping outside the bounds of reasonable argument here...

The other advice, in fact, more often than not, has more impact on more 
zope installations...

> The fact that the issue of the GIL is not more prominent in the Zope 
> worlds, I think is because relatively few zopistas are aware that there 
> is a problem; mostly, because not so many run multicpu-boxes in 
> production, and also because of attitude, I suppose: "since I don't have 
> a problem with it, I don't care about it, and I'll inform you so."

Actually, most people run multiple zeo clients on multi-processor boxes 
and let the native task scheduler "do the right thing". For "most 
people" this seems to work just fine...

Chris

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