> > Can you think of any reason why a filesystem would perform ``okay'' in
> > single-user, but not under multiuser?
> >
> > I tried removing everything (except sshd and wscons) from my rc.conf, and
> > still the disk drive's performance is terrible when I finish booting to
> > multiuser.
> >
> > But, if I ``boot -s'' and manually mount filesystems, things are much more
> > respectable---at least up until such time as I hit ^D to finish the boot
> > to multiuser.  Then things seem to go right back to ``normal''.
>
> Did you try to run benchmarks in both single-user and multiuser mode ?

No.  I suppose I could manually build a benchmark or two to be sure that
it isn't using shared libraries and try that...


> Maybe there's something doing disk I/O at the end of multiuser boot (like
> raid parity rewrite) ? Did you watch with 'systat vm' what the hardware

The disk's LED is off after multiuser boot.  I don't have RAID set up.

I seem to recal sysstat vm being suggested the last time I had time to
spend on this, and there was nothing to suggest that the system was being
loaded down by anything.


I think that the next time that I have time to touch this problem, the
quickest thing to do is to figure out where (among the clutter) to put
things from on top of my other computer, and try swapping the physical
drives.  If that helps, it may just be that the drive is not performing.


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu