Re: Terrible system slowness

[ignatios%netbsd.org@localhost]

Hallo,


On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 10:08:27PM -0400, Todd Gruhn wrote:
>    I decided to get back to running NetBSD on a new computer with a spare
>    drive:
>    Just now I ran /bin/ksh configure for lesstif. The configure operation
>    alone too 45min.

That's not normal at all. Please post your /var/run/dmesg.boot, maybe
some timer is misdetected... did the situation improve after your
reinstall?

>    According to
>    swapctl -g -s this is 298GB (UGHH!) is there a nice way to trim the swap
>    partition?

Well, swactl -d yourswapdevice
edit the partition table, depending on your partitioning method 
swapctl -a yourswapdevice
use the now-free space for something else.

For details, read

http://www.netbsd.org/docs/misc/index.html#swap
man swap
man fstab

>    ALSO, is there a point where adding swap to a mechanical HD becomes a
>    liability?
>    Has anyone messed with swap on a RAMDISK?

There's no point doing that. Even no swap at all will work, given your
RAM size, unless you want do do really big operations, and the RAM 
is better used directly than to copy other RAM before using it.

However; (normally) the (first) swap device is used as a dump device;
should the kernel crash, a core dump is written and can, at reboot, be
written by savecore to /var/crash/... where it can later be analyzed.
This dump device must be big enough to save all active memory (possibly
compessed), so having it at least as big as your RAM is a good idea.

Regards,
	-is