From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 21 19:09:30 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6015216A405 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from burningc@sdf.lonestar.org) Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (mx.freeshell.ORG [192.94.73.18]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CFF7F13C45B for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from burningc@sdf.lonestar.org) Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (burningc@sdf.lonestar.org [192.94.73.1]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.13.5.20060308/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l0LJ9Nmw028660 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:23 GMT Received: (from burningc@localhost) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.13.8/8.12.8/Submit) id l0LJ9kBV017535; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:46 GMT Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:46 +0000 (UTC) From: Glenn Becker To: DIST - FreeBSD Questions Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: general question re: performance X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:09:30 -0000 All - One of the reasons I jumped into trying a kernel configuration/compile is that I have been noticing performance issues with STABLE. (if you are reading and want to skip the following explanatory verbiage the questions are: how do I profile applications to figure out where the performance bottleneck is? and can these be addressed by compiling a custom kernel?) =>explanatory verbiage I'm running 6.2 on an old but not ancient Dell laptop, PIII 1000MHz, which now has seven operating systems on it. I have noticed recently that the graphics-heavy planetarium program Stellarium -- which runs great on my Debian GNU/Linux system -- barely creaks along on FreeBSD and is basically unusable. This is NOT FreeBSD bashing ... it's more that I feel as though 1) something may have changed since I last used the system much and/or 2) I am doing something stupid. I am actually accustomed to FreeBSD being lighter and faster than the Linuxes, so it especially surprised me. In my quest to get my ports up to speed I have noticed some gugundous compilation times, too ... when I had FreeBSD running on a certifiably ancient Pentium laptop I got used to letting make buildworld run overnight ... but at the moment I am looking at the make of gfortran some hours after I kicked it off. So ... I would like to know how to profile applications (like Stellarium) to see where the bottlenecks are and then know more about how to fix them. Is it generally accepted that a custom kernel with all the fat trimmed will help? Thanks in advance, Glenn +-----------------------------------------------------+ Glenn Becker - burningc@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org +-----------------------------------------------------+