Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:28:37 -0500 From: "Charles Howse" <chowse@charter.net> To: "'Kent Stewart'" <kstewart@owt.com>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Comparing buildworld times on twin machines Message-ID: <000f01c385ff$19a53d00$04fea8c0@moe> In-Reply-To: <200309281309.16986.kstewart@owt.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> On Sunday 28 September 2003 12:37 pm, Charles Howse wrote: > > Hi, > > I have 2 machines on my home network with (almost) identical > > hardware. They both have Celeron 300, same motherboards, same BIOS, > > same options set in BIOS, etc. > > Same make.conf, same kernel config. > > I kill SETI@home before starting on each machine. > > The only difference is that curly has 128 MB ram where=20 > larry has only > > 64. > > > > They *do not*, however have identical hard drives, even though each > > machine has 2 drives, with /usr/obj on the second drive of each > > machine. > > > > When I buildworld, I use the following command, and write the output > > to '$blog'. > > > > [portion of script omitted, entire script is attached as update1.sh] > > > > \time -aho $$blog make buildworld > > > > [snip] > > > > Larry can buildworld in 1 hr 57 mins. > > It takes curly 3 hrs 16 mins, even though curly has twice the ram. > > > > If I watch the compile, with one eye on the disk activity light, it > > seems to me that the process is largely CPU intensive, therefore I > > would expect that the buildworld times should be roughly equal. > > > > 1) How can I determine what might be causing curly to take so long > > compared to larry? > > > > 2) Since curly runs httpd, and vsftpd, is it acceptable to run the > > entire build/install process in single-user mode in order to prevent > > other processes from eating CPU cycles? > > > > >=20 > On my systems, which all run setiathome, I only see a few percent=20 > variation in buildworld time with seti running. I start=20 > setiathome with=20 > a -nice 19 so that it doesn't interfere. Me, too. > You might be able to see some of the processes running using top. You=20 > could always stop apache. True, I could do that, but what is your opinion on running the entire build/install process from single-user mode? (my original question) > I kind of wonder if you have cache turned on in the cpu. That much=20 > difference is pretty hard to come up with unless your 2 daemons are=20 > interfering. You might see that running top. Watch the swap to see if=20 > anything is happening. Oh, geeeez, technical stuff! ;-) I'm a real dumbass in the BIOS. I just select "Load High Performance Settings" on each machine, and then change the boot order to my liking. I did notice that 'internal cache' is set to 'write-back'. Am I on the right track? =20 *Exactly* how do I watch the swap...in top?
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?000f01c385ff$19a53d00$04fea8c0>