Subject: Interactive performance in -current
To: None <tech-kern@NetBSD.org>
From: None <jmmv@menta.net>
List: tech-kern
Date: 10/24/2003 18:19:57
Hi all,
I've been noticing interactive performance degradation in recent current
(19 Oct, updating now to today) under somewhat heavy disk I/O (IDE). Note
that the last commits WRT performance improvements are not in my actual
kernel, but should not improve things, AFAICT.
Some symptoms completely visible under X:
- The mouse does not move smoothly, the window manager (xfwm4) takes forever
to switch desktops, terminal windows do not respond...
- The TV viewer (fxtv) does strange things (or at least bktr). Periodically,
a frame gets stalled and is overlapped over all the next ones, producing a
very ugly effect. It disappears after very few time, but happens again,
almost continuously. (and note that it is using overlayed video)
- XMMS stops playing (as commented in another message today). Adjusting the
volume, for example, lets it continue.
Some more notes: when this happens, if I run top, I can see that the CPU
interrupt state is very high, over 75% (dunno if this has something to do).
And this started happening recently; it was much better before. I wonder if
this has something to do with all those changes done recently to the IDE
code.
Ideas about what changed?
Thanks.
PS: Luckily, the system does not panic.
--
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv@menta.net>
The NetBSD Project - http://www.NetBSD.org/