HEADS UP! Kernel debugging disabled in RELENG_5 [Fwd: cvs commit: src/sys/i386/conf GENERIC src/sys/pc98/conf GENERIC src/sys/sparc64/conf GENERIC]

[Kris Kennaway]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 08:31:41PM -0400, Brian Fundakowski Feldman wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 05:55:29PM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> > All,
> > 
> > Since we are closing in on the 5.3 release, I've removed the kernel 
> > debugging options from GENERIC in RELENG_5.  They can of course be 
> > re-enabled by adding the appropriate lines back in locally.  However,
> > from now on when filing a kernel-related bug report, make sure to
> > enable WITNESS, INVARIANTS, and DDB/KDB to help determine the problem.
> 
> It's not necessarily a good thing to disable INVARIANTS without verifying
> it has a huge cost in performance.  It would be invaluable finding more
> bugs in production, and will likely be sorely missed.  IT's also worth
> noting DDB/KDB is broken anyway in fairly large ways (on i386, at least,
> breakpoints don't work and even with the "fix" you get panics soon if
> you really do try to use them).

INVARIANTS does have quite a significant impact on performance. 

5.3 + 4BSD + INVARIANTS
     2205.39 real      3840.87 user      1583.64 sys
5.3 + 4BSD - INVARIANTS
     1862.61 real      3752.97 user      1141.81 sys

That's the 'make world' time for the same source tree built under
different kernels.

Kris