On Thu, Mar 11, 1999 at 04:45:14PM -0500, port-i386-owner-Thilo.Manske=HEH.Uni-Oldenburg.DE@netbsd.org wrote:
> Has anyone come across this? Heres a scenario:
> Ill be compiling a program and meanwhile trying to use another program in X
> ..
> Ill be moving my mouse around and it freezes for a moment and then the mouse
> moves and freezes for a sec ... etc .. you get the picture ..
I suppose you have IDE-drives and don't have Manuel Bouyer's IDE-Patches 
applied.  Because of this disc I/O is PIO-driven and may freeze the system for
short periods. 

Mounting a RAM-disc for temporary data is probably a good idea since it will
take some load from the IDE bus.
eg: "mount_mfs /dev/wd0b /mnt;TMPDIR=/mnt;export TMPDIR" before compiling
or add "/dev/wd0b /tmp mfs rw 0 0" to your /etc/fstab.

Use some other partition if you don't have /dev/wd0b, AFAIK the device is only 
used to set the geometry (size etc.) of the RAM-disc/memory FS. Most people
use the primary swap-device.

Even better is to (additionaly) apply Manuel's patches and try to get them to
work. IDE with (U)DMA makes much more fun. IIRC they're somewhere on
NetBSD.org's ftp-servers (or mirrors). (BTW: Not needed for -current)

  Bye,
    Thilo.
--
Dies ist Thilos Unix Signature! Viel Spass damit.