On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Brian Chase wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, NetBSD Bob wrote:
>
> > The slowness in the tcpip stacks is another problem.  The
> > 1.5 takes a big hit in 1.5 compared to 1.4.3, on the same
> > machine....MVII/DEQNA.  The 1.4.3 easily runs 220k/s, but
> > the 1.5 can only muster up 150k/s.  That may or may not
> > be important, but if one relies on ftp installs, for example,
> > that is significant.
>
> Definitely, this is not good.  If 1.5 is performing at only 68% of what
> 1.4.3 offered, something's not so good.  Given the addition of IPv6 and
> friends, maybe some inefficiencies have bee introduced into the networking
> stack.  This one is going to need work to track down.  Someone mentioned
> turning on kernel profiling, which I think is a good first step.
>
	Have people benchmarked any snapshots between 1.4 and 1.5 - that
	would give a good indication of when the problem started.

	Also, does a 1.5 kernel without IPv6 support run any faster than
	one with?

	Another option for someone with time but not wanting to dive into
	code would be to use anoncvs to build different kernels along
	the 1.4 -> 1.5 timeline to identify where the problem started.

> > Another problem is that there is no good booting scheme for
> > the early machines, except for tape, and that does not yet
> > exist in 1.5. [...]
>
> This is more of an general install subsystem problem.  There's no reason
> this can't work under the 1.5 series.  Brownlee did some minor hacking and
> I did rather thorough testing of sysinst installs from tape, disk, and the
> network under the 1.4.1 release.  This included machines that had as
> little as 5Megs of RAM and that were as slow as MicroVAX-IIs and
> VAXstation 2000s.
>
	There was a certain degree of entertainment if I recall :)

> David Brownlee bundled up the diffs for the work on 1.4.1 at:
>   ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.4.1/vax/vaxdiffs.gz
>
> Applying these to 1.5 will require some manual inspection I'm sure.  I
> still need to get 1.5 up and running at home before I can help here. In
> the meantime, if someone beats me to fixing up the install, I won't be
> sad. :-)

	My MicroVax II is buried after a house move, and my other vax
	is in Brian's safe keeping, so I won't be able to look at this
	for a while :( On the plus side, I should have cable and a phone
	line at home in the new year :)

		David/absolute		-- www.netbsd.org: No hype required --