Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Tuning information for ISC 386/ix
Message-ID: <38451@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 19 Sep 89 20:46:29 GMT
Reply-To: madd@std.com
Organization: Software Tool & Die
Lines: 26

I recently installed Interactive Systems Corp's 386/ix version 2.0.2
on my 386 machine.  Unfortunately my machine has only 4mb and I'm
trying to run X.

I expected the thing to run slowly, and it does.  What I didn't expect
is that after a few hours of disuse it begins to hang terribly (not
swap, HANG).  Worse, even unloading the system (shutting down X and
logging all users out) doesn't restore performance to the system; this
morning I got it into a state where there were no users logged in but
a login from the console would time out.  This was distressing.

I think that this is the result of improper tuning (what in hell could
it be *doing* while it's hanging?), but I'm from the BSD world and
have no idea how to tune a SysV kernel.

If some kind soul could send me an mtune file that works reasonably
well (considering) for a system with 4mb memory, ethernet, and x11 (a
heavy STREAMS user), I would be very grateful.  Additionally, I will
be upgrading to 8mb and putting NFS on the thing, so any tuning
information for such a system would also be useful.

Please respond via email to madd@std.com (uunet!skuld!madd).  Thanks.

jim frost
software tool & die
madd@std.com