On 964638524 seconds since the Beginning of the UNIX epoch
Der Beagle wrote:
>
>I just tried "file->new->navigator window" a few times with "systat vmstat"
>running on the console and CPU idle never dropped below 96%.  So it
>doesn't look like memory bandwidth, zero-fill or otherwise, is the
>problem.  It also isn't hitting the disks at all.

Okay, I've installed Netscape 4.73 locally on my PWS433a and although
file->new->navigator window takes human perceptable time it is
under a second.  I tried to look at systat, but it was all over
too quickly.  :-)

So, in order to find out what the problem is we should examine the
variables in the equation:

	o I have Netscape set to `blank page' on start-up.  You might
	  try this, perhaps netscape is trying to do something with the
	  default page that takes a while.  [sure this is a stab in the
	  dark.]
	o My Netscape is 4.73 while yours is 4.51.  I don't imagine
	  that'd make a large difference, but who knows.
	o My kernel is 1.5_ALPHA while yours is 1.4.1.  There might be
	  some differences in the handling of certain things that make
	  1.5_ALPHA a lot faster.  On the other hand, I have not noticed
	  any large delay in the past on either my PWS433a, my AS 200 or
	  even the Multias and have been running many different versions
	  of NetBSD on them that probably include something quite like
	  1.4.1.

Also, there are several datapoints that might make the situation
a bit more clear.  Mainly, who is chewing up the CPU while the
window is starting?  Is it Netscape?  Is it the Xserver?  Is it
user time or system time?  If it is system time, it might make
sense to ktrace Netscape and open a new window and see if you can
see what it is doing, or perhaps build a profiling kernel and see
where the time is being spent.

This seems to me like it must be a peculiarity, and we should
certainly squash it.

 == Roland Dowdeswell                      http://www.Imrryr.ORG/~elric/  ==
 == The Unofficial NetBSD Web Pages        http://www.Imrryr.ORG/NetBSD/  ==
 == The NetBSD Project                            http://www.NetBSD.ORG/  ==