> > 
> > Hi, 
>  
> > Could somebody please confirm that kernels _without_ DIAGNOSTIC are
> > horribly slow ?
> > 
> This does seem to be the case. It's quite noticable causing my machine to take
> much longer to boot. A kernel build also goes from 1 hour to 2.5 hours!. I was 
> running systat while doing this and it seems pretty similar to the diagnostic 
> kernel but on occasion the irq %age would jup to 60+%. I have never seen this 
> in my with DIAGNOSTIC compiled kernel. Have we uncovered some subtle race 
> condition?

My current kernel has DIAGNOSTIC off.  I haven't notieced this, but that 
may not necessarily mean anything.

Can you build a profiling kernel (config -p) and find out where the 
bottleneck is?

R.