RE: 2.4.10 still slow compared to 2.4.5pre1

[DICKENS,CARY]

> 
> With a synchronous NFS export, I'd expect the disk throughput
> to be lowered to such an extent that VM issues were not
> significant in throughput.  But you have been seeing kswapd
> problems so hmmm...

We are comparing synchronous to synchronous between 2.4.5pre1 and 2.4.10 so
I wouldn't expect such a difference.
  
> Conceivably this is a networking problem, and not an FS/VM
> problem.  There were significant changes to the softirq
> handling between 2.4.5 and 2.4.10, for example.

I don't understand what the softirq is or how that could effect performance.
If you could point me in a direction to look, I'll check that out.
 
> Could I suggest that you split these variables apart?  Perform
> some comparative FS/VM testing between the kernels, and then
> some comparative network testing?

This was on my list of things to do, but I haven't gotten there yet. ;)
Working on it though.

> Is it possible to run the SFS clients on the same machine,
> over loopback?
>

I don't see me getting to this anytime in the near future.  If it will tell
me what I need to know, I'll add it to my to do list.

Cary