> >
> >The new I/O sorting algorithm in -current should make this significantly
> >better.  I am hoping that it can become the default for 2.0.
> 
> Thor, I find -current to be almost unusable for interactive work when 
> there's something I/O-intensive running at the same time.  I have
> NEW_BUFQ_STRATEGY enabled, as best I can tell.  Here are my vm. sysctl 
> values, on a 256M machine:

I can confirm this.  I'm using i386 1.6ZH with NEW_BUFQ_STRATEGY and
soft updates on IDE disks.  My vm sysctl values are the same as below.
Yesterday, I upgraded Mozilla and MozillaFirebird on the machine.
While the source files of those packages was un-tarring, the system
was dead in the water, and not only for interactive use.  That machine
also servers NFS from some other disks, and access to those from
network clients also halted during all of the heavy I/O activity.

David S.

> 
> vm.nkmempages = 16354
> vm.anonmin = 30
> vm.execmin = 30
> vm.filemin = 10
> vm.maxslp = 20
> vm.uspace = 16384
> vm.anonmax = 80
> vm.execmax = 60
> vm.filemax = 50
> vm.bufcache = 20
> vm.bufmem_lowater = 3348480
> vm.bufmem_hiwater = 53575680
> 
>