doelz@urz.unibas.ch (Reinhard Doelz) (05/16/89)
Hi, I noticed that having turned the accounting on slows down the window opening as well. Must be caused by the slow accounting system (being not up to a top performance anyway). If you turn off accounting you might gain some speed. Logging in with the option NOGRAPHICS (in upper case after the username on the login line) makes the graphics console behave like a (very dull) text terminal. So you might save a few megs of core. However, what is the 4D worth without its graphics? My suggestion is that you have a look on the priorities: The news_ser process always got a non-ageing prio of 64 on our system (somethying beyond 3.1D on a 4D/80GT). Maybe you might want to change that with a npri -h40 -p... command inserting the right PID. *TAKE CARE* not to use lower numbers - otherwise your system is busy doing window stuff only. Reinhard
wiltse@oceana.SGI.COM (Wiltse Carpenter) (05/16/89)
In article <80*doelz@urz.unibas.ch>, doelz@urz.unibas.ch (Reinhard Doelz) writes: > My suggestion is that you have a look on the priorities: The news_ser process > always got a non-ageing prio of 64 on our system (somethying beyond 3.1D on > a 4D/80GT). Maybe you might want to change that with a > npri -h40 -p... > command inserting the right PID. *TAKE CARE* not to use lower numbers - > otherwise your system is busy doing window stuff only. Setting non-degrading priorities for 4Sight can have several adverse side affects. The basic work of 4Sight can be divided into three classes. First, it handles window user interface functions like moving, pushing, and popping. Second, it is an execution environment for PostScript programs like the round clock demo. Third, it helps in handling multiple modes of windows. By `multiple modes' I mean simultaneous and independent double buffered, color index, and rgb mode windows. Most of the work in handling multiple mode windows is done by the hardware, but some setup and context switching is done in conjunction with 4Sight. Setting a non-degrading, high priority (a low numbered argument to the npri command) for 4Sight improves the response time for pop-up menus and window manipulation. However as Mr. Doelz points out, if one is running PostScript-based applications, they will get an unfair advantage over other processes on the system. Considering these two factors led us to pick the value of 64 as the fixed priority for 4Sight. The third factor I mentioned above only comes into play when a hardware-specific number of windows are active. The magic numbers are 4 for an 8-bitplane Personal Iris and 16 for all other SGI machines. After more careful analysis (made possible through new process tracing tools), we have concluded that the best non-degrading priority for 4Sight is no non-degrading priority at all! If you have an 8-bitplane PI, try this: npri -h0 xxxxx # where xxxxx is the pid for news_server and see if it improves window redraw time. -Wiltse