filesystem activity causes 4.0 to bog down

[Jeffrey Mulligan]

by pixar!rta at ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Rick Ace):

> 4.  Same system.
> Experimental load:  cp largefile newfile
> Now the window system bogs down real bad.  Typing ^Z in the
> window where the "cp" was running had no effect!  Trying to
> open or close other windows experienced extreme delays.
> ...Have you noticed this type of behavior on your systems?...

Since we have converted to 4.0, I have had programs become un-^Z-able,
un-^C-able.  These turned out to be 60-second core dumps.  Not
surprisingly, these problems are more severe on our 4Mb sun-3's.  It is
too bad that the system says "Segmentation error; core dumped" at the END
of the core dump, instead of saying "Segmentation violation; dumping core"
and the beginning of the core dump.  At least then you would know what was
happening.

And yes, when these core dumps are going on the window system is not
merely sluggish, it is dead to the world.

	Jeff Mulligan (jbm at aurora.arc.nasa.gov)
	NASA/Ames Research Ctr., Mail Stop 239-3, Moffet Field CA, 94035
	(415) 694-6290

[[ I don't find that surprising.  Dumping "core" is something that the
kernel does, and it tends to inhibit all normal user process activity
while it is going on.  Since a workstation has to dump to an NFS or nd
file system, it makes it only worse.  --wnl ]]