Low/Jerky performance in FreeBSD 7

[Jeremie Le Hen]

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 08:45:41AM -0700, Yani Brankov wrote:
>  I recently updated to FreeBSD 7 and noticed that my box started to perform 
>  as windows does under heavier loads. The mouse starts to be jerky when 
>  compiling, window updates/redraws are slow and bump the CPU usage up to 
>  100%. I attributed this to the mga driver which comes with the distro in the 
>  beginning. However, I later noticed the same happens even when X has not 
>  been started. For instance, I start a kernel compile and the console mouse 
>  becomes jumpy. All these have never happened before with FreeBSD on this 
>  box. It has enough memory (1.5G) and relatively fast CPU (2.5GHz). I started 
>  to think this may be originating from kernel level (irq handling, long times 
>  in giant locked code during syscalls, etc).
> 
>  I am wondering whether it is only me who has hit this problem or it is more 
>  common. It may be also related to hardware configuration, etc. I'm trying to 
>  figure out.

Try profiling your kernel with PMC:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2006-February/061096.html

Regards,
-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
< jeremie at le-hen dot org >< ttz at chchile dot org >