On Mon, Aug 04, 1997 at 11:56:12AM +0200, dillema@acm.org wrote:
> 
> Lately, when trying to build netbsd-current on a i486 this machine
> comes to a grinding halt now and then.

[...]

> in on this problem. The `freezing' is irregular in time and space, I
> never know when it will start freezing (mostly when building libc
> though). After noticing a drop in interactivity , I sometimes have
> time to kill the make build and everything seems to go back to
> normal. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time after the `freezing'
> starts to find out what's actually going on or gather some info at
> all. I've got the suspicion it's NFS is responsible for it, but I'm
> pretty clueless on how to find out.

You should try to see what the processes are doing before it crashes.
For example, you can have a 'top' running with a frequent update of
its screen (say, top -s 2) in another window, and look what the processes
are doing when the 486 gets sluggish. You could post a few lines
from the top output.

- Frank