Hi,

I have a server where I host a lot of sites. Mostly static html but also many forums etc.

My current my.cnf file contains the following settings.

[client]
port = 3306
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock


[mysqld_safe]
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
nice = 0

[mysqld]
old_passwords = true
user = mysql
pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port = 3306
basedir = /usr
datadir = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir = /tmp
language = /usr/share/mysql/english
skip-external-locking
bind-address = 74.86.119.49

key_buffer = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
thread_stack = 128K
thread_cache_size = 8

query_cache_limit = 1048576
query_cache_size = 16777216
query_cache_type = 1
skip-bdb

[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 16M

These are the default and maybe not fully optimized for my server config.

My server:
2 * Intel Xeon 5160 (Dual Core) processors
8 GB RAM.
Seagate® Cheetah® 15K.4 enterprise hard drives.

Question:
Can I optimize the my.cnf to more closely fit my server specs?

Any suggestions.

To properly know the answer to this question, one would need to know approximately how much memory might be utilized by applications running on your server, as well as how much memory is available after all your other applications on your server have started.

I'd highly recommend googling for 'MySQL Optimization' and reading about it. Here's a guide:
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/MySQL/MySQL-Optimization-part-1/

Hope this helps..