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To: Paul MacKenzie <bsdlist@cogeco.ca>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
From: Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net>
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Subject: Re: 7.1-PRERELEASE: arcmsr write performance problem
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At 03:27 PM 12/15/2008, Paul MacKenzie wrote:

> > What does top -S show ? Most of the load is in system.  Does the
> > machine in question have a rather large master.passwd file by chance ?
> > (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=75855)
> >         ---Mike
> >
>Thanks for your quick reply:
>
>master.passwd is only 9467 (with a ls-l)

I would try the change to /etc/nsswitch.conf so that group and passwd read

group: files
passwd: files

At that file size, it sounds like you only have about 200 entries 
?  I doubt its the issue, but its worth a try.  I know at around 
9,000 files anything to do with UID lookups (e.g. ls -l) takes forever.


>   PID USERNAME        VCSW  IVCSW   READ  WRITE  FAULT  TOTAL PERCENT
>COMMAND
>    54 root               2      0      0      7      0      7 100.00% syncer

Do you have any other special tuning other than polling ? Any in 
/boot/loader.conf or /etc/sysctl.conf ?

Does gstat show the disks busy ?

         ---Mike