hi,

> > Possibly:
> > 
> > % uname -sr && uptime && pmap 0 | wc -l
> > NetBSD 1.6ZI
> >  3:27PM  up 22:16, 6 users, load averages: 1.33, 1.62, 1.63
> > date
> >    47165
> > % Wed Feb  4 16:34:17 GMT 2004
> > 
> > As in it took 1:07 to do the pmap.. At least that gives 2 options:
> > - try compiling with NEW_BUFQ_STRATEGY
> As i expected this didn't improve the situation much. 
> - reboot
> - ps running with about 70ms system time.
> - starting to build a release - ps takes about 6 seconds system time.
>   - Around 6800 entries in kernel map.
> - after release build
>   - ps alxww: 0.029u 27.702s 0:28.01 98.9%    0+0k 0+0io 2pf+0w -> @96 procs: ~290 ms/process!
>   - pmap 0 | wc: 23017  138098 1148633
> 
> Looks like ps/pmap suffer immensely from recent changes. Also
> ps/pmap seem in invoke operations that do not scale well and
> seem to be related to kernel map fragmentation. 
> 
> BTW: kernel.maxvnodes is 128000.

is your kernel has DEBUG option?

YAMAMOTO Takashi