Subject: jerky interactive behavior
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 01/20/2007 21:23:22
I recently upgraded my kernel to one from January 8 (and then to one
from today).  Before that, I'd been running a mid-December -current.

Interactive performance on my Thinkpad T42 has become completely
unacceptable.  Something else -- I have no idea what -- occasionally
grabs the CPU.  Moving the mouse shows jerky cursor motion, I get
doubled input characters, etc.  ps and top show that the machine is
mostly idle, though xosview sometimes shows brief spurts of 100% busy.
It isn't swapping (it's got 2G of RAM), the interrupt load doesn't seem
high (about 1.4-1.6K/sec, with HZ set to 1000), etc.  

Is anyone else seeing this?  Anything I should do to tune it?  Might
the new scheduler code be part of it?


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb