Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 16:10:35 -0500 (CDT) From: "M. L. Dodson" <bdodson@beowulf.utmb.edu> To: Arcady Genkin <a.genkin@utoronto.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD is painfully slow on my 486 Message-ID: <199907012110.QAA86650@beowulf.utmb.edu> In-Reply-To: <87aetg6pae.fsf@main.wgaf.net> References: <87aetg6pae.fsf@main.wgaf.net>
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Arcady Genkin writes: > I'm quite desperate by now -- I dumped Linux for FreeBSD on an i486 > that I used as a firewall, and FreeBSD is much slower. I mean *really* > slow. The 486 is DX4 and works at 100MHz. It has 16M or RAM. Not > exactly a screamer, but it is fast enough for a machine with no X > installed. > > I compiled a custom kernel, disabling pretty much everything. > > I suspected that "Turbo" could have been turned off, but Linux kernel > from a rescue disk reports 49 bogomips, which seems to be > reasonable. I also know that the disk access is slower because fs's > are mounted syncronously, but it shouldn't be *that* slower. > > I'll give you a couple of examples: kernel compilation takes 4 hours, > whereas somebody on this list reported that his similar 486 takes 30 > minutes to compile a kernel. Midnight commander takes 7 seconds to > start, and I have to wait for 7-8 seconds for its file viewer to open > a file. > > I hope somebody can help me determine whether FreeBSD doesn't support > something on my computer (for example, the chipset is ALI1429 -- Linux > had a special option for this chipset in kernel config). Perhaps I > should throw in the towel. Or is there still hope for me? <AOL mode> Me too! </AOL mode> Seriously, I had something similar happen to me. I would guess it is your motherboard. My situation: 486 with 8MB and VLB SCSI disk system (this was a long time ago). Measure speed with bonnie. Add memory to bring to 16MB. Measure speed with bonnie. Observe that bonnie showed the system to be slower than the 386SX with 6MB and an IDE disk system, and the same version of FBSD, sitting right next to the 486. The slowdown was easily perceptible sitting at the machine. I posted all over; several people said they had observed similar phenomena. I dumped it for a Pentium. The motherboard was one of those that used some sort of phase locked loop to generate the clock (no crystal on the board). My speculation was that the additional load of the extra (30 pin) SIMMS caused it to clock at some lower multiple of the 25MHz it was supposed to be running at. (Don't flame me; I said it was a speculation ;-) [major deletia (at the risk of making up a word :-)] -- M. L. Dodson bdodson@scms.utmb.edu 409-772-2178 FAX: 409-772-1790 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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