Re: VAX static vs dynamic performance

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

I thought I'd test the static vs dynamic netbsd-6 install on simh (on
my T420s thinkpad). Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your
view) the numbers do not seem to be significant.

Timed by hand, repeated a couple of times:

From completion of kernel load sizes line until login prompt
- dynamic: ~58 sec
- static: ~56 sec

Login as root with empty password, from RETURN to # prompt
- dynamic: ~19 sec
- static: ~18 sec

Unless someone has a slow vax on which to test them I think I'll move
onto some simple benchmarks on differing NetBSD versions under simh
(which will probably tell us nothing, but its at least easy enough to
do in the background while I'm out and about on my laptop).

I'll probably make up some ra90 disk images with NetBSD versions
installed. Would anyone find them of any interest if I put them up on
a public server? should they have a full non-x install, just base, or
something else?


On 20 April 2014 15:35, David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> On 19 April 2014 16:56, David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>> On 19 April 2014 07:27, Johnny Billquist <bqt%update.uu.se@localhost> wrote:
>>> Ayup. 30 seconds from entering username until I get a password prompt is
>>> clearly asking the system to do much more today than in the past, so
>>> obviously it is just as expected, and nothing to even talk about.
>>
>> The system now processes through all the PAM infrastructure, which
>> provides a bunch of additional functionality. Whether that
>> functionality is worthwhile is certainly a valid discussion.
>>
>> It makes heavy use of shared objects, which I believe is also a
>> significant performance hit on current VAX.
>>
>> It would be interesting to see what profiling might report for a login 
>> sequence.
>>
>> The sun2 port builds with NOPIC= so everything is static linked. It
>> would also be nice to compare the performance for a NOPIC= build of
>> NetBSD/vax (I'm just started a netbsd-6 static vax build to see if it
>> completes, but I don't really have an ideal machine on which to test)
>
> I've just built both static and dynamic netbsd-6 vax releases without
> x11 from the same source
> - http://sync.absd.org/vax/6-vax-2014-04-19-static/
> - http://sync.absd.org/vax/6-vax-2014-04-19/
> in case someone would like to compare the relative speeds on a slow box...
>
> It needed a small tweak to the set lists which is in current but not
> pulled up into netbsd-6 yet -
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/source-changes/2014/04/20/msg054188.html
> otherwise it was just a standard ./build.sh with the following in
> /etc/mk.conf
>
> .if ${MACHINE} == vax
> NOPIC=  # no shared libraries
> MKX11=no
> .endif