How to improve overall system responsiveness

From NetBSD Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Here go some tricks how to screw up your NetBSD installation for better system responsiveness

This applies to NetBSD 4.0_BETA2.

Please note, it might kill your pet. This is not recommended or supported in any way, but it's a good showcase for benchmarks comparing to humpy-frumpy Linux distributions, or on non-critical installations. It worked fairly well on my desktop. Do it at your own peril. Don't ask for support if you screw up your system!

disc i/o

Uncomment in your kernel config and rebuild: 

   # Enable experimental buffer queue strategy for better responsiveness under
   # high disk I/O load. Likely stable but not yet the default.
   options         BUFQ_READPRIO
   options         BUFQ_PRIOCSCAN

cpuflags

Install devel/cpuflags and let it determine custom compiler flags. The -march and -mtune apply to kernel's "makeoptions CPUFLAGS". Rebuild base and/or packages, e.g. firefox with something like 

   cd www/firefox && CFLAGS="-g -march=i686 -mtune=athlon-xp -mfpmath=sse -msse" make install .

Make it permanent in mk.conf. Don't be too generous, -march breaks compatibility, -mtune is supposed to be safe.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_improve_overall_system_responsiveness"
Personal tools