This machine is an 800MHz Athlon with 128M ram, a 20G UDMA66 hard drive,
and a Netgear FA310TX nic.

In multiuser mode with only root logged in running top, load average
hovered around 0.07 to 0.13.  Unpriviliged user logs in (remote or on
console didn't matter) and the load immediately shot to around 0.25 to
0.40.  User sat idle and load went back to 0.13 or so.  User started
typing stuff and load shot way up again.  User then did some stuff that
should bump up the load average of a normal machine to .50 or so and the
load went to 1.40 and beyond.  All this time, the machine had the kind of
sluggish respone one would get from a load average that high.

The next day I loaded Slack 7.0 and concluded that this problem wasn't
likely due to hardware trouble (maybe the ethernet driver?).  Sometime
later I loaded 1.5_ALPHA2.  Load averages were still abnormally high, but
not nearly so.  With just root logged in running top, load was around 0.03
to 0.07.  Add a user typing stuff and load went to 0.15 or so.  User doing
heavy stuff that should have given a load of 0.50 made show a load of
around 1.00.


Following is output from dmesg and ps aux from the 1.5_ALPHA2 install.

NetBSD 1.5_ALPHA2 (GENERIC) #2: Mon Aug 21 19:17:53 MEST 2000
    fvdl@sushi:/work/trees/netbsd-1-5/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: AMD K7 (Athlon) (686-class)
total memory = 127 MB
avail memory = 113 MB
using 1658 buffers containing 6632 KB of memory
BIOS32 rev. 0 found at 0xfb470
mainbus0 (root)
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1
pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0
pchb0: VIA Technologies VT8371 (Apollo KX133) Host Bridge (rev. 0x02)
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: VIA Technologies VT8371 (Apollo KX133) PCI-PCI Bridge (rev. 0x00)
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
pci1: i/o space, memory space enabled
pcib0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0
pcib0: VIA Technologies VT82C686A (Apollo KX133) PCI-ISA Bridge (rev. 0x22)
pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: VIA Tech VT82C586A IDE Controller (rev. 0x10)
pciide0: bus-master DMA support present
pciide0: primary channel configured to compatibility mode
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <Maxtor 92041U4>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 19541 MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 40020624 sectors
wd0: 32-bit data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 4
pciide0: primary channel interrupting at irq 14
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (using DMA data transfers)
pciide0: secondary channel configured to compatibility mode
atapibus0 at pciide0 channel 1
cd0 at atapibus0 drive 0: <FX320S, , q01> type 5 cdrom removable
cd0: 32-bit data port
cd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
pciide0: secondary channel interrupting at irq 15
cd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 (using DMA data transfers)
pchb1 at pci0 dev 7 function 4
pchb1: VIA Technologies VT82C686A SMBus Controller (rev. 0x30)
tlp0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: Lite-On 82C169 Ethernet, pass 2.0
tlp0: interrupting at irq 11
tlp0: Ethernet address 00:a0:cc:d2:06:7c
ukphy0 at tlp0 phy 1: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface
ukphy0: BCM5201 10/100 media interface (OUI 0x001018, model 0x0021), rev. 2
ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
isa0 at pcib0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4: ns16550a, working fifo
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3: ns16550a, working fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60-0x64
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard
pms0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pms0 mux 0
vga0 at isa0 port 0x3b0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff
wsdisplay0 at vga0: console (80x25, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378-0x37b irq 7
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: PC speaker
sysbeep0 at pcppi0
isapnp0 at isa0 port 0x279: ISA Plug 'n Play device support
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0-0xff: using exception 16
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
isapnp0: no ISA Plug 'n Play devices found
biomask e765 netmask ef65 ttymask ffe7
boot device: wd0
root on wd0a dumps on wd0b
root file system type: ffs
wsdisplay0: screen 1 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 2 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 3 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 4 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0


USER  PID %CPU %MEM VSZ   RSS TT STAT STARTED    TIME COMMAND
root    0  0.0  8.2   0 10672 ?? DLs   3:34PM 0:00.00 (swapper)
garph 258  0.0  0.2 448   212 E1 Is+   3:38PM 0:00.02 -sh 
root  246  0.0  0.2 428   280 E0 Ss    3:38PM 0:00.03 -csh 
root  195  0.0  0.3  48   432 E3 Is+   3:34PM 0:00.00 /usr/libexec/getty Pc ttyE
root  194  0.0  0.3  48   432 E2 Is+   3:34PM 0:00.00 /usr/libexec/getty Pc ttyE
root  190  0.0  0.3 220   412 ?? Is    3:34PM 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/cron 
root  187  0.0  0.3  56   356 ?? Is    3:34PM 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/inetd -l 
root  111  0.0  0.3 100   400 ?? Ss    3:34PM 0:00.05 /usr/sbin/syslogd -s 
root    4  0.0  8.2   0 10672 ?? DL    3:34PM 0:00.02 (ioflush)
root    3  0.0  8.2   0 10672 ?? DL    3:34PM 0:00.01 (reaper)
root    2  0.0  8.2   0 10672 ?? DL    3:34PM 0:00.00 (pagedaemon)
root    1  0.0  0.2 308   188 ?? Is    3:34PM 0:00.01 init 
root  260  0.0  0.1 340   144 E0 R+    3:39PM 0:00.00 ps aux 



Garph, the tinkering