4.2 System Tuning

[Srinivas Bikkina]

I am running 4.2BSD on a VAX 780 with 4 Able VMZ32N's configured as dmf32's.
Following were some of the statistics taken when the system response was awful.
I am puzzled with the very high figure (1000's) of interrupts field of vmstat.
At the time the statistics were taken there were 16 users. But, this happened
even when there are  1 or 2 users on a weekend. This situation occurs now and
then, while our normal figures for interupts are between 200-400.

<Output of vmstat 1>
 procs     memory                       page      disk  faults          cpu
 r b w   avm  fre  re at  pi  po  fr  de  sr h0 h1 x2 x3  in  sy  cs us sy id
 7 0 0  3276  947   0  2   1   0   0   0   1  5  2  0  0 529 416  30 26 72  2
 7 0 0  3276  947   6  1   0   0   0   0   0  0  2  0  01025 104  21 32 68  0
 7 0 0  3276  947   5  0   0   0   0   0   0  0  2  0  01021 108  21 37 63  0
 4 0 0  2749 1044   4  0   0   0   0   0   0  0  0  0  01020  97  19 38 62  0
 4 0 0  2749 1044   3  0   0   0   0   0   0  2  0  0  01023  90  19 43 57  0
 6 0 0  3161  950   0  0   5   0   0   0   0 24 14  0  01067  62  35 25 75  0
 5 0 0  2734 1073   1  3   1   0   0   0   0  6  8  0  01051 120  27 22 78  0

<OUTPUT of iostat 1>
      tty          hp0           hp1          cpu
 tin tout bps tps msps  bps tps msps  us ni sy id
 423  579  19   5 25.2    7   2 22.4  26  0 72  2
 957 1044   7   2 15.8   10   2 15.8  41  0 59  0
 931 1223   1   1 29.0    6   2 10.2  30  0 70  0
1019 1047  31   6 19.9   20  16 18.0   8  0 92  0
 956 1026   5   1 31.7   27  11 18.3  30  0 70  0
 967 1065   0   0  0.0    0   0  0.0  44  0 56  0
 963 1059   7   1 11.7    0   0  0.0  39  0 61  0

<OUTPUT of ps a>
  PID TT STAT  TIME COMMAND
16345 p0 S     0:11 -h -i (csh)
16415 p0 R     0:01 ps a
15372 h0 I     0:26 -u (csh)
16343 h0 S     0:00 script
16344 h0 S     0:01 script
16406 h3 I     0:02 /usr/ingres/bin/monitor CM 16406 c9 apts /usr/ingres
16407 h3 I     0:01 /usr/ingres/bin/vaxingres CP 16406 c9 apts /usr/ingres
16171 hf S     0:06 vi deb3
16050 i1 IW    0:01 mail
16411 i2 R     0:03 w
16412 i2 S     0:00 sort
16413 i2 I     0:00 more
16136 j1 S     0:17 vi rep
15369 j7 IW    0:10 vi proto.pe
16307 j9 I     0:00 make
16308 j9 I     0:00 cc -I. -DDEBUG -g xfer.c
16340 j9 R     0:23 ccom /tmp/ctm163084 /tmp/ctm163083 -Xg

I would appreciate any information on system tuning.
I will be glad to provide any more necessary information.
Please respond by mail.
Thanking you in advance,
bikki.
    ...{allegra,ihnp4,ucbvax}!arizona!asuvax!isosvax
    ...{ucbvax!hplabs,ihnp4!dual}!intelca!omovax!isosvax