Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 00:04:27 +0000 From: Anton Shterenlikht <mexas@bristol.ac.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: lpt0 printer slows system response significantly Message-ID: <20061101000426.GA60303@mech-aslap33.men.bris.ac.uk>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hello I have a printer attached to a parallel port on an old Compaq Armada 1700 laptop. When I print large (> 100k) documents the system responds very slow (1-3sec) to keyboard strokes or mouse moves. I wonder if I can lower the priority of printing. The details: $dmesg [skip] FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE #1: Thu Sep 14 10:40:41 BST 2006 Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (233.34-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x652 Stepping = 2 Features=0x183f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR> real memory = 167772160 (160 MB) avail memory = 158879744 (151 MB) [skip] lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0 lpt0: Interrupt-driven port ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0 Two typical outputs from top taken during printing: last pid: 12387; load averages: 0.75, 0.44, 0.23 up 2+01:16:32 10:48:06 89 processes: 2 running, 63 sleeping, 23 waiting, 1 lock Mem: 81M Active, 24M Inact, 37M Wired, 6940K Cache, 25M Buf, 3868K Free Swap: 128M Total, 108K Used, 128M Free PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND 18 root 1 -60 -179 0K 8K *Giant 15:09 77.05% irq7: lpt0 11 root 1 171 52 0K 8K RUN 48.0H 11.13% idle 12269 daemon 1 -8 0 10996K 8908K pipewr 0:27 6.15% gs 485 root 1 96 0 18064K 16668K select 6:30 0.00% Xorg 28 root 1 -32 -151 0K 8K WAIT 5:05 0.00% swi4: clock sio and last pid: 12388; load averages: 0.75, 0.44, 0.23 up 2+01:16:34 10:48:08 89 processes: 3 running, 62 sleeping, 24 waiting Mem: 81M Active, 24M Inact, 37M Wired, 6940K Cache, 25M Buf, 3868K Free Swap: 128M Total, 108K Used, 128M Free PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND 18 root 1 -60 -179 0K 8K WAIT 15:10 77.34% irq7: ppc0 11 root 1 171 52 0K 8K RUN 48.0H 10.89% idle 12269 daemon 1 99 0 10996K 8908K RUN 0:28 5.57% gs 40 root 1 171 52 0K 8K pgzero 0:35 0.15% pagezero 12270 daemon 1 -8 0 1184K 580K piperd 0:01 0.05% cat 485 root 1 96 0 18064K 16668K select 6:30 0.00% Xorg 28 root 1 -32 -151 0K 8K WAIT 5:05 0.00% swi4: clock sio In the user manual I found about vm.swap_idle_enables kernel variable. Is that something I should try? thanks anton
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20061101000426.GA60303>