On Wed, Sep 5, 2001 9:07 PM, Grant Beattie <mailto:grant@grunta.com> wrote:
>On 1.5.1 (both i386 and sparc), while running newfs, other IO on the
>system is ridiculously slow, to the point where `pwd' waited until
>newfs had finished (several minutes later) before it returned
>anything.
>
>Even under heavy disk usage, this is not normally the case, only
>during newfs.
>
>Is there a reason for this strange behavior, and is it fixed in
>-current?
>
>Having other IO come to a grinding halt while running newfs is not
>exactly desired :-)
>
>

That is from running newfs on the same spindle as / .
( Your using a IDE drive, right?)

If you newfs another drive you will not see the slow down.

does nice -n 20 newfs help?

To see what is going on run systat -w 1 vm in one window
then start newfs.




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