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Date:      02 Jul 1999 10:02:32 -0400
From:      Arcady Genkin <a.genkin@utoronto.ca>
To:        Alfred Perlstein <bright@rush.net>
Cc:        Arcady Genkin <a.genkin@utoronto.ca>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD is painfully slow on my 486
Message-ID:  <87btdvywsn.fsf@main.wgaf.net>
In-Reply-To: Alfred Perlstein's message of "Fri, 02 Jul 1999 03:31:32 -0500 (EST)"
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.990702032729.14320p-100000@cygnus.rush.net>

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Alfred Perlstein <bright@rush.net> writes:

> I think you need to give us some perspective of what's wrong:
> 
> 1) are cpu bound things slow?
> 2) are programs that access a lot of memory slow when not swapping
>     this will test the cpu cache somewhat
> 3) is paging really slow?
> 4) what about I/O? on raw devices, on block devices?
> 5) does top show that you have almost no free memory?
> 
> for a 486, i would recommend enabling multi-block and 32 bit
> transfers if possible, leave DMA off, i'm quite sure it wasn't
> available for that kind of hardware.

It seems to me that the things are not only affected by slower
I/O. For example scrolling in /sdand/sysinstall I can feel perceptible 
delays between me pressing "down" key and the cursor actually moving
down. Same for other programs. I'm aware that I/O is slower with
synchroniously mounted devices, but I don't think it should cause
system slowing down *that* much.

last pid:   351;  load averages:  0.14,  0.13,  0.08  up 0+00:09:15    11:56:17
17 processes:  1 running, 16 sleeping

Mem: 3216K Active, 4828K Inact, 2784K Wired, 1426K Buf, 3752K Free
Swap: 40M Total, 40M Free

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
  318 antipode   2   0  1636K  1284K select   0:09  1.78%  1.76% midc
  152 root       2   0   888K   620K select   0:02  0.00%  0.00% inetd
  309 antipode  10   0   500K   320K wait     0:02  0.00%  0.00% sh
  308 root       2   0   876K   636K select   0:02  0.00%  0.00% telnetd
  316 antipode  10   0   500K   352K wait     0:02  0.00%  0.00% sh
  111 root       2   0   820K   572K select   0:02  0.00%  0.00% syslogd
  315 root       2   0   876K   636K select   0:01  0.00%  0.00% telnetd
  351 antipode  50   0  1548K   824K RUN      0:01  0.00%  0.00% top
  305 root       3   0   824K   572K ttyin    0:01  0.00%  0.00% getty
  307 root       3   0   824K   572K ttyin    0:01  0.00%  0.00% getty
  306 root       3   0   824K   572K ttyin    0:01  0.00%  0.00% getty
  155 root      10   0   980K   592K nanslp   0:00  0.00%  0.00% cron
    1 root      10   0   420K   236K wait     0:00  0.00%  0.00% init
  159 root       2   0  1304K   952K select   0:00  0.00%  0.00% sendmail
  299 root       2   0   480K   288K select   0:00  0.00%  0.00% dhclient
  120 daemon     2   0   820K   400K select   0:00  0.00%  0.00% portmap
   42 root      18   0   204K    84K pause    0:00  0.00%  0.00% adjkerntz

I'm not sure if it made to the list the last time, so I'll repost
benchmark results for that machine -- can you guys have a look and
tell me where the things are slower than they shoud be for an i486 DX4 
with 16M of RAM?

==============================================================

  BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 3.11)
  System -- door.wgaf.net
  Start Benchmark Run: Thu Jul 1 07:32:18 EST 1999
   3 interactive users.
Dhrystone 2 without register variables     4713.8 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Dhrystone 2 using register variables       6390.7 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = arithoh)         149278.2 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = register)          1746.4 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = short)             3861.1 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = int)               2211.7 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = long)              2211.1 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = float)             5517.4 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Arithmetic Test (type = double)            5573.2 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
System Call Overhead Test                  1948.5 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Pipe Throughput Test                       1624.5 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching Test           757.9 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Process Creation Test                        72.0 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
Execl Throughput Test                        41.2 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)
File Read  (10 seconds)                    2908.0 KBps  (10 secs, 6 samples)
File Write (10 seconds)                     600.0 KBps  (10 secs, 6 samples)
File Copy  (10 seconds)                     360.0 KBps  (10 secs, 6 samples)
File Read  (30 seconds)                    3140.0 KBps  (30 secs, 6 samples)
File Write (30 seconds)                     533.0 KBps  (30 secs, 6 samples)
File Copy  (30 seconds)                     392.0 KBps  (30 secs, 6 samples)
C Compiler Test                               7.0 lpm   (60 secs, 3 samples)
Shell scripts (1 concurrent)                 11.0 lpm   (60 secs, 3 samples)
Shell scripts (2 concurrent)                  5.3 lpm   (60 secs, 3 samples)
Shell scripts (4 concurrent)                  2.6 lpm   (60 secs, 3 samples)
Shell scripts (8 concurrent)                  1.0 lpm   (60 secs, 3 samples)
Dc: sqrt(2) to 99 decimal places           1324.3 lpm   (60 secs, 6 samples)
Recursion Test--Tower of Hanoi               71.9 lps   (10 secs, 6 samples)

                     INDEX VALUES            
TEST                                        BASELINE     RESULT      INDEX

Arithmetic Test (type = double)               2541.7     5573.2        2.2
Dhrystone 2 without register variables       22366.3     4713.8        0.2
Execl Throughput Test                           16.5       41.2        2.5
File Copy  (30 seconds)                        179.0      392.0        2.2
Pipe-based Context Switching Test             1318.5      757.9        0.6
Shell scripts (8 concurrent)                     4.0        1.0        0.2
                                                                 =========
     SUM of  6 items                                                   7.9
     AVERAGE                                                           1.3

-- 
Arcady Genkin
"... without money one gets nothing in this world, not even a certificate
of eternal blessedness in the other world..." (S. Kierkegaard)


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