Re: OpenBSD and multitasking

Mihai Popescu wrote (2022-04-26 01:13 CEST):
> I use OpenBSD amd64 snapshots on the following dmesg hardware.
> The download rate on a browser was slow and I figured out with some
> memory mapped partition that disk transfer rate was slow.
> I can bear this since I'm not into large file transfer business. But
> here is another interesting fact: each time my disk is used by some
> file transfer, all the running applications, mostly GUI based are
> stalling - that includes mostly chromium ( even if it is not chromium
> that it does the disk data transfer).
>
> My questions are: is something incorrectly set up on my computer,
> regarding the multitasking?
> I understand disk operations are slow, but may I say that kernel is
> dragged in that slow transfer too (no DMA, no cache, etc.)?
> Does this happens to all users, but since there are more powerful
> configuration involved the delay is not so noticeable?

Mount your file systems with the softdep flag (described in mount(8)).
This should bring HDD i/o to what you're used to on other operating
systems.

> I know it is hard to project this, but can someone give me a hint
> about a minimum hardware to allow using chromium with no delays,
> please?

"No" delays? You need one of these https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor
so you can jump over the delays. The good news is, that the slowness
of your machine wouldn't matter anymore. Unfortunately this would have
the side effect that the world around you ages faster. I'd suggest you
invest into real estate to make the skipped time worth more... but I'm
getting carried away...

*scnr*

> I know, it should be advisable to get the maximum performance
> hardware, but i'm not in that case.

This is all very personal. I think chrome+openbsd runs well on 5 year
old hardware with an SSD.

Best Regards,
Stefan