On 3 July 2012 15:43, Johnny Billquist <bqt%update.uu.se@localhost> wrote:
Kernel size isn't the problem. I have a 4000/90 with 128MB of memory, and it
makes no difference... It's become bog slow.
gcc in itself makes a difference when you are compiling, but I suspect the
biggest cost is additional code paths all over the kernel, such as kauth.
Same for userland, where you have pam. They are all rather heavy. I remember
when we switched from sendmail to postfix. Startup time for a VAX increased
from a few seconds to over a minute to just start the mail daemon...
OK, though what would help would be some useful benchmarks and then
like-for-like comparisons.
Maybe something like:
- pkgsrc/benchmarks/lmbench
- pkgsrc/benchmarks/bonnie++
- pkgsrc/benchmarks/ttcp (to & from fast host on same network)
- time to ssh localhost using public/private key authentication
Actually startup time may be a good metric for some specific tests -
say timing a NetBSD 1.6 system bootup from NetBSD banner to login
prompt, then repeating the test with a -2, -3, -4, -5 and -6 kernel
(but keeping everything else the same) to see how the kernel changes
have affected matters.
What benchmarks do you think make sense?