From owner-help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Wed May 29 18:12:24 1996
Subject: Re: Slow performance on linux - workaround 
From: Evan Thomas <evan at plexus dot physiol dot unimelb dot edu dot au>
To: Jim Van Zandt <jrv at mbunix dot mitre dot org>,         Octave help <help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 09:13:12 +1000

Jim Van Zandt wrote:
>  
> Maybe the Sun had enough memory that the relevant disk sectors
> (directory entries for the function files) were all in buffers, so no
> actual disk access was needed.
>
> You could try freeing up memory by getting rid of X windows and other
> terminal sessions, and ensuring there's plenty of swap space (so
> little-used code can be swapped out), and simplifying the search path.
>
> Alternatively, you could try filling up the memory on the Sun to see
> whether the performance problem appears there.  You could write a
> trivial program that mallocs a block of memory then waits for a
> specified time or a keypress.  I suppose you would have to fill up
> swap space before it would have any impact.
>
>                                     - Jim Van Zandt

This almost certainly isn't the problem. The Sun is running X, acting as Web
server, doing file and e-mail serving, etc. The Linux box is just running octave
over an rlogin session - nothing else (normal it runs that other operating
system, I just get to use it occassionally). Both machines have 32Mb of memory
and neither appear to be doing significat IO (ie paging) when octave is running.

I tried setting the LOADPATH to the current directory only (LOADPATH=".") but it
didn't fix it. (My functions are in the current directory, anyway, which is the
first in the search path.)

Evan.
--
Evan Thomas
Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology
University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3052
ph: 9344-5849  fax: 9347-5219