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[ On Saturday, April 8, 2000 at 00:35:15 (+1000), matthew green wrote: ]
> Subject: re: /etc/rc.d/ runs slowsly 
>
> i thought there was a backdoor hack in that boottime used to
> disable running ps to check if a daemon was already running..
> did luke not commit this???

It doesn't look like any fix has yet been committed.

The "ps -c" trick speeds up PS, but it's not the only problem with the
rc functions -- "while" loops in shell scripts are also somewhat slow,
especially if they have to fork 'test' twice on every iteration!  ;-)

The patch below speeds things up by at least a factor of three to four,
if not an order of magnitude, on my little 486dx66.  Even with an 8MB
machine rc.subr is painfully and unacceptably slow in its original form:

23:33 [993] # cp rc.subr.orig /etc
23:33 [994] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart                                                                           
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
   17.54s real     2.15s user    16.05s system
23:34 [995] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart 
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
   17.20s real     2.17s user    16.20s system
23:34 [996] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart 
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
   16.77s real     2.05s user    15.91s system
23:34 [997] # cp rc.subr /etc
23:34 [998] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart 
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
    5.95s real     1.17s user     4.19s system
23:35 [999] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart 
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
    5.26s real     1.25s user     4.20s system
23:35 [1000] # time /etc/rc.d/rwho restart 
Stopping rwhod.
Starting rwhod.
    6.11s real     1.27s user     4.40s system

WARNING: this patch uses 'fgrep' even though it isn't in /usr/bin.  I
can get away with this because I keep /usr on my root filesystem (where
it belongs! :-).  If it's not appropriate to move 'grep' to /bin for the
sticks-in-the-mud who don't want to move /usr to the root FS, then
perhaps 'sed' or maybe a really simple stand-alone true fgrep clone
would be appropriate.  Note that a static 'sed' is only ~87k on i386.
Personally if I were to keep /usr on a separate FS then I'd want 'awk'
in /bin too.

--- /most/var/sup/sup.NetBSD.ORG/src/etc/rc.subr	Fri Mar 10 07:10:34 2000
+++ /usr/src/etc/rc.subr	Sat Apr  8 23:14:52 2000
@@ -115,16 +115,10 @@
 	if [ -z "$_pid" ]; then
 		return
 	fi
-	_procnamebn=`basename $_procname`
-	ps -p $_pid -o 'pid,command' | while read _npid _arg0 _argv; do
-		if [ "$_npid" = "PID" ]; then
-			continue
-		fi
-		if [ "$_arg0" = "$_procname" -o "$_arg0" = "$_procnamebn" \
-		    -o "$_arg0" = "${_procnamebn}:" ]; then
-			echo $_npid
-			return
-		fi
+	_procnamebn=$(basename $_procname)
+	ps -p $_pid -o 'pid,command' | fgrep $_procnamebn | while read _npid _arg0; do
+		echo $_npid
+		return
 	done
 }
 
@@ -139,17 +133,11 @@
 	if [ -z "$_procname" ]; then
 		err 3 'USAGE: check_process procname'
 	fi
-	_procnamebn=`basename $_procname`
+	_procnamebn=$(basename $_procname)
 	_pref=
-	ps -ax -o 'pid,command' | while read _npid _arg0 _argv; do
-		if [ "$_npid" = "PID" ]; then
-			continue
-		fi
-		if [ "$_arg0" = "$_procname" -o "$_arg0" = "$_procnamebn" \
-		    -o "$_arg0" = "${_procnamebn}:" ]; then
-			echo -n "$_pref$_npid"
-			_pref=" "
-		fi
+	ps -axc -o 'pid,command' | fgrep $_procnamebn | while read _npid _arg0; do
+		echo -n "$_pref$_npid"
+		_pref=" "
 	done
 }


-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>