On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 02:46:12AM +0000, Alex Kirk wrote:
> I've noticed, going through packages, that often my system spends several 
> hours (5+ in this particular case) on a call like the following: 
> 
> root    9017  1.5 36.3 27468 5948 ??  D     9:44PM 15:44.53 /usr/libexec/cc1 
> /var/tmp/ccdAAIZ7.i -quiet -dumpbase runtime.c - 

As others have noted, this is a portion of the compiler -- in fact, cc1
*is* the C compiler.  Note that it's got a 27 MB VSZ and a 6 MB RSS;
this means that it's trying to use a lot more memory than your system is
able to provide it, and it's swapping.  (This also explains the "D" in
the STATE column.)

Anything you can do to provide more memory would help.  Kill off
unneeded daemons, etc.

What does your kernel say about memory when it starts up?  Look for
output like this:

(from my alpha)
| 8192 byte page size, 1 processor.
| total memory = 49152 KB
| (2368 KB reserved for PROM, 46784 KB used by NetBSD)
| avail memory = 36232 KB
| using 305 buffers containing 2440 KB of memory

And, what are you compiling, anyways?

-andy