[ On Sunday, March 18, 2001 at 19:50:19 (+0100), wojtek@wojtek.from.pl wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: why /bin and /sbin static
>
> customized 1.5 standard - binary about 1.15MB

It will be interesting to see what the unified buffer cache will do to
your experiement....

> > What's the raw speed on your disk?
> 
> 1MB/s

Hmmm, thought so....

> > How much swap space is used during this process?
> 
> 50MB. after booting it's 500kB swap and 1MB free.

WOW!  No wonder it takes so long!!!!  (Of course you only gave me one
set of numbers, not a proper comparison between the two scenarios.)

What does "vmsat -s" show right after the login prompt comes up in each
case?  Those are the really interesting numbers....

> > I suspect that if you have a decently fast disk and enough RAM not to
> > need any swap space for this normal operation, then you won't be able to
> > notice any difference in boot times.  I suspect you do have almost
> 
> yes

Actually as it turns out you don't have enough RAM, at least not for the
jobs you're starting at boot and the order they're started in.

> > even an 850MB disk is likely to have an extremely slow disk.  I.e. try
> > the same test on a proper server hardware platform that's designed to
> > run as a general purpose multi-user Unix system.
> 
> sorry but you are talking like micro$oft!!!!

NO, I most definitely am not.  Unix has *always* in the past required
beefier systems than M$ crap (or CP/M that came before it).  Only
recently has M$ crap gone the other way and out-stripped even Unix in
its greed for system resources.  Unix was never a toy OS and it never
really did anything useful on toy computers.

Though your 486 laptop is in some respects far more powerful (at least
CPU-wise) than early Unix systems, it is not really capable of properly
running a modern Unix-like operating system, and especially not as a
server, as is clearly evidenced by your numbers.  Your laptop was a poor
excuse for a computer in many ways even in its day.  It's not now, and
never was, a server-class machine.  Stop running servers (eg. inetd and
sshd) on it, and you'll see a bit of improvement.  I know 386/25MHz
machines that would blow that laptop right out of the water.

But better yet try your experiment with a proper server (i.e. something
with a wee bit better ratio of I/O throughput to its CPU/RAM speed) and
that's also scaled to run your modern OS (i.e. has enough RAM) and then
we'll talk again.

YOU:  "Doctor, Doctor!!!  When I stick a pin in my thumb it hurts and
      bleeds and I don't like it!"

DOCTOR:  "Well then don't stick a pin in your thumb, silly!"

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>