I have never had the specific problems you're referring to.  I have
noticed, though, that at times metadata updates take a gargantuan
amount of [CPU] time.  For instance, a chmod -R operation on
/usr/pkgsrc takes up 90% CPU for over ten minutes (it's mostly stuck
in segio or biowait).  The same opreation with FFS takes about 15
seconds and never more than 20% CPU.

Even though I have a dual-core CPU, any interactive applications are
virtually unusable (especially XFree86) when I change the ownership,
modes, etc. of a large number of files.

Does anyone know what is going on here?  I have set
vfs.lfs.pagetrip=3250  (played with many values), tried many different
logical segment/block/frag sizes.  I'm surprised I haven't heard
anyone else mention this, which is why I'm inquiring about this
[again].

Happy holidays,

--Blair