Hi Shawn,

On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 12:11:08PM -0700, Shawn W. wrote:

> I have an Ultra 5 with a 270mhz UltraSparc IIi running NetBSD 3.1,  
> that usually sits around running dhcpd and hosting a ssh login. Its  
> load average when idle is consistently in the 0.08-0.10 range.  
> Looking at top, [ioflush] is consistently at the top of CPU-usage.  
> I'm used to other operating systems having a load average of 0 when  
> idle like that. Any idea what's happening?

The load average calculation has been broken for a long time, but it's
fixed in -current. The fix may still be merged into what will become 
NetBSD 4.
 
> Also, since while 3.1 is the latest release, it seems to be based on  
> a many-years-old version of the development tree, I'm thinking about  
> updating to a 4.0 beta (If I can find a recent one compiled for  
> sparc64) or a -current snapshot (They're not the same thing, right?  

No, NetBSD 4 was branched from -current some months ago and is in the
process of being released. I don't know of an ETA yet but it will be
some time soon. -current is in a continuous state of development and
is not guaranteed to be stable.

> Trying to find out any information about what'll be in future  
> releases and how -current relates to 4.0 on the netbsd web page was  
> frustrating) so I can play with the latest and greatest -- in  
> particular, hardware accelerated GL, since my Ultra 5 has an ATI Mach  
> 64 card (I don't think I'd /use/ it since I usually don't have a  
> monitor even hooked up to the machine, but it would be rewarding to  
> see a fast glxgears).

I'm not sure if that will work on sparc64, hopefully someone else will
speak up.

> Getting the thread bug fix would be nice too.

That is part of -current unfortunatley. Work is being done on NetBSD 4 to
improve the situation there but it is unlikely to make it into the release
of NetBSD 4.

> And, mmm... do any of the development versions support SMP on sparc64? I
> have a dual-cpu Ultra 60 with an old version of FreeBSD I wouldn't mind
> using with Net instead.

Most of the code is there, but there are a few fairly dramatic bugs that
prevent it from working correctly. It is being worked on, but again no
ETA..

Andrew