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Date:      Wed, 04 Jan 1995 21:41:37 -0800
From:      David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
To:        jim.bryant@whytel.com
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: HELP!@# 
Message-ID:  <199501050541.VAA00421@corbin.Root.COM>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 04 Jan 95 20:47:16 CST." <9501042047.0T7BF00@whytel.com> 

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> The speed of the OS seems to be a helluva lot slower than 1.1.5.1, under 
> 1.1.5.1 the nasa/ames pitest program runs in about 350 seconds, but under 
> 2.* it runs in 840+ seconds.  I'll upload pitest.tar.gz to: 
> wcarchive.cdrom.com:/pub/incoming/FreeBSD
> --
> config and dmesg follow:

   You have absolutely the *weirdest* config file I've ever seen. *Why* do you
have all of those options? FASTLINKS? pseudo-device *pager? ...and a whole
slew of stuff that you either don't need or don't want. Your performance
problems are in part related to this - 4MB machines simply don't have enough
memory to support this.

> maxusers        32

Why? You need at least 16MB of memory to support that many users effectively.

> maxfdescs       2048

Why? - deprecated a long time ago.

> timezone        6 dst 5

Why? - deprecated a long time ago.

> options         BOUNCE_BUFFERS

Why? Bounce buffer are only needed on systems with >16MB of memory and SCSI.

> pseudo-device   pty 32

Why?

> options         "NCONS=8"

This is fine if you plan to use them all, but it requires a lot of memory. On
a 4MB machine, *4* is more reasonable.

> options         SYSVSEM
> options         SYSVMSG

Why? Do you actually have an application that needs Semaphore and SYSV
messaging? This code in 2.0 is partly broken anyway.

> options         SYSVSHM
> options         SHMMAXPGS=64

Why? You can't possibly be running X in 4MB...do you have an application that
needs SYSV shared memory support?

> pseudo-device   sl2
> pseudo-device   ppp2

Why? Are you actually doing *both* SLIP and PPP at the same time on 2 serial
ports at the same time?

> options         QUOTA

Why? Do you actually need filesystem quota support?

> options         FASTLINKS

Why? Deprecated a long time ago.

> options         "UPDATE_INTERVAL=1"

Why? This actually will severely lower system performance.

> pseudo-device   devpager
> pseudo-device   swappager
> pseudo-device   vnodepager

Why? Deprecated a long time ago.

> pseudo-device   gzip

Okay if you plan to use it, but not normally necessary.

> options         "USER_LDT"

Only needed for WINE support.

> real memory  = 4063232 (992 pages)
> avail memory = 3002368 (733 pages)

   This is you problem. Basically, you're trying to generate a kernel that
requires much more memory to work efficiently than you have. The reason that
your program runs so slowly is that 1) The minimum 2.0 kernel is much larger
than than the 1.1.5 kernel, and 2) you have a fat bloated kernel with options
that most people will never use.
   I suggest that you start with the GENERIC kernel config file, remove device
support that you don't need, and build a small custom kernel.

-DG



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