I'm trying to tweak my MySQL server to fit my needs... and I have a basic question: What is the key buffer?
Through try and error I've found that a bigger key buffer makes my inserts faster... but I don't quite understand what it is. So... before I make something I might regret, I'd like to know what it is, and how it works.
The script I'm running (MyISAM tables) is making about 2000 inserts per second.
(My server setup is Intel i7, 8GB RAM, CentOS 5.5, MySQL Server 5.0.)