slow sparc questions

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: R P Herrold [mailto:herrold at owlriver.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 14, 2000 5:50 PM
> To: Damien Miller
> Cc: Gregory Leblanc; OpenSSH List (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: slow sparc questions
> 
> On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Damien Miller wrote:
> 
> > > "debug: Sent encrypted session key.".  The pause is for 
> about 10 seconds,
> <snip>
> > > First, why is this machine SO much slower than my 486?  
> > 
> > This sounds like DNS problems - the server may be trying to 
> resolve the 
> > client's hostname from its IP address? If the client does 
> not have an
> > in-addr.arpa address or an entry in the hosts file then 
> this can take
> > a while to timeout.
> 
> ... well, no - not it's not DNS related ... even with the
> prior non-OpenSSH, connects with a fully functioning DNS
> (forward and reverse) can only be described as 'glacier-like'
> in their startup on a Sparc 2 -- I stripped almost ALL
> services, spare consoles, turned off the inetd - everything,
> and _still_ cannot get reasonable throughput.  I had assumed
> that the math processing was not up to par.

I'll double check things with DNS, but I'm not convinced, yet.  :-) [several
hours pass]

Ok, I got back to check on things, DNS is properly configured, things
haven't changed.  Which end of the connection were you talking about doing a
reverse lookup, the server (SPARCstation2) or the client (some other
machine)?  My SS2 should have been able to handle lookups fine, I had hosts
properly configured.  I've added the SS2 to my DNS server, but that hasn't
made any difference.

Drifting off-topic slightly, here are some SPEC numbers from relative
machine machines.  

System   CPU  BUS  Cache  SPECint  SPECfp  Info 
         Mhz  Mhz  Int/   92       92      Date 
                   Ext                          
SS2      40   20   64     21.8     22.8    Oct92
Intel    50   50   8/256  30.1     14.0    Oct92
486DX                                           
Intel    66   33   8/256  32.4     16.1    Sep92
486DX2                                          
Pentium  60   60   8/256  70.4     55.1    Mar95

I've got an SS2, and a 486DX 50.  Somehow, it doesn't seem that there is
that big of a difference.  However, just for reference, I've used the P60
systems, and compared them with similar 486 DX2 66 systems, and the 486's
"felt" faster.  

> I have not recently tried an install of openssh/openssl (I
> thought I filed a private bugreport with Damien, but don't
> have a copy on the host I am at) -- it died during compile
> perhaps 6 months ago -- I'll retry and run some time trials.

Hmm, I don't compile things on my SS2, instead I use my dual proc SS20.
There is a patch for the RPM that makes it work properly on S/Linux, but I
don't know if that was your test platform or not.  Thanks,
	Greg