(warning long post) Hi all, A recent thread on a I subscribe to in regard to the usefullness of using the -j flag on a make world led me to run a test over the weekend just to see it's effectiveness. This is the section of the handbook that started it all for me: (from: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/makeworld.html) "It is now possible to specify a -j option to make which will cause it to spawn several simultaneous processes. This is most useful on multi-CPU machines. However, since much of the compiling process is IO bound rather than CPU bound it is also useful on single CPU machines. On a typical single-CPU machine you would run: # make -j4 buildworld make(1) will then have up to 4 processes running at any one time. Empirical evidence posted to the mailing lists shows this generally gives the best performance benefit. If you have a multi-CPU machine and you are using an SMP configured kernel try values between 6 and 10 and see how they speed things up." So to test this out I wrote a shell script to time a make -jN buildworld where N = a number from 1-8. The idea is to see if there is any speedup between running make -j1 and make -j8 on a dual proc box. Now this is not scientific, altho maybe the findings are typical for a low system load box. I also had the box sleep for 60 secs between each build. Here are my timings: building world with 1 jobs... real 95m20.543s user 83m18.550s sys 13m20.120s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 2 jobs... real 54m15.856s user 84m42.337s sys 16m39.216s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 3 jobs... real 53m53.239s user 85m12.189s sys 17m13.039s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 4 jobs... real 53m56.539s user 85m22.767s sys 17m22.433s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 5 jobs... real 54m10.993s user 85m30.995s sys 17m14.160s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 6 jobs... real 54m10.814s user 85m24.063s sys 17m27.437s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 7 jobs... real 54m15.289s user 85m25.479s sys 17m27.751s cleaning /usr/src.... building world with 8 jobs... real 54m23.526s user 85m27.173s sys 17m28.891s As you can tell there does not seem to be a rampup after a make -j2 buildworld. This is a SMP system, with stripped scisi disks (altho the controller is GIANT locked....maybe this is preventing additional gains?). For completness here is my dmesg: Copyright (c) 1992-2005 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE #1: Tue Jan 4 19:06:52 EST 2005 root@host.mydomain.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU - S 1266MHz (1263.08-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6b4 Stepping = 4 Features=0x383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE> real memory = 1610530816 (1535 MB) avail memory = 1568518144 (1495 MB) MPTable: <IBM ENSW NF 4100R SMP> FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 3 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 0 ioapic0: Assuming intbase of 0 ioapic1: Assuming intbase of 16 ioapic1 <Version 1.1> irqs 16-31 on motherboard ioapic0 <Version 1.1> irqs 0-15 on motherboard npx0: [FAST] npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <MPTable Host-PCI bridge> pcibus 0 on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pci0: <display, VGA> at device 1.0 (no driver attached) fxp0: <Intel 82559 Pro/100 Ethernet> port 0x2200-0x223f mem 0xfea00000-0xfeafffff,0xfeb7f000-0xfeb7ffff irq 27 at device 2.0 on pci0 miibus0: <MII bus> on fxp0 inphy0: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus0 inphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto fxp0: Ethernet address: 00:09:6b:9a:12:13 fxp1: <Intel 82559 Pro/100 Ethernet> port 0x2240-0x227f mem 0xfe900000-0xfe9fffff,0xfeb7e000-0xfeb7efff irq 25 at device 10.0 on pci0 miibus1: <MII bus> on fxp1 inphy1: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus1 inphy1: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto fxp1: Ethernet address: 00:09:6b:9a:12:14 isab0: <PCI-ISA bridge> port 0x440-0x44f at device 15.0 on pci0 isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0 atapci0: <ServerWorks ROSB4 UDMA33 controller> port 0x700-0x70f,0x376,0x170-0x177,0x3f6,0x1f0-0x1f7 at device 15.1 on pci0 ata0: channel #0 on atapci0 ata1: channel #1 on atapci0 ohci0: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> mem 0xfeb7d000-0xfeb7dfff irq 7 at device 15.2 on pci0 ohci0: [GIANT-LOCKED] usb0: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support usb0: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> on ohci0 usb0: USB revision 1.0 uhub0: (0x1166) OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered pcib1: <MPTable Host-PCI bridge> pcibus 1 on motherboard pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1 pci1: <mass storage, SCSI> at device 3.0 (no driver attached) ips0: <IBM ServeRAID Adapter> mem 0xedffe000-0xedffffff irq 20 at device 5.0 on pci1 ips0: [GIANT-LOCKED] cpu0 on motherboard cpu1 on motherboard orm0: <ISA Option ROMs> at iomem 0xcc800-0xd47ff,0xcb000-0xcc7ff,0xc0000-0xcafff on isa0 pmtimer0 on isa0 atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x64,0x60 on isa0 atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> irq 1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED] fdc0: <Enhanced floppy controller> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0 fdc0: [FAST] fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 ppc0: parallel port not found. sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0 sio1: port may not be enabled vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 unknown: <PNP0501> can't assign resources (port) ppc1: parallel port not found. unknown: <PNP0700> can't assign resources (port) unknown: <PNP0303> can't assign resources (port) Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec acd0: CDROM <LG CD-ROM CRN-8245B/1.16> at ata0-master UDMA33 ips0: adapter type: ServeRAID 4Lx (neo lite) ips0: logical drives: 1 ips0: Logical Drive 0: RAID1 sectors: 71096320, state OK ipsd0: <Logical Drive> on ips0 ipsd0: Logical Drive (34715MB) SMP: AP CPU #1 Launched! Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ipsd0s1a So, unless I misread the section of the handbook, I should be seeing a decrease in time for these buldworlds but am not. Any idea why this is not happening. Cheers, Pete Wright -- ~~o0OO0o~~ Pete Wright www.nycbug.org NYC's *BSD User Group