Hi all, You may have seen my earlier thread in which I did a quick and dirty review of NetBSD 9.1 on a Thinkpad X250. Since 9.2 came out, I went ahead and did a clean install of that version to see how it compares. This post is basically a bit of a follow-up on the previous one. I'm keeping it separate since this is based on my experiences with 9.2. Overall, I must say the experience was certainly better on this particular machine. Version 9.2 felt stabler than its predecessor and I no longer experienced any "RIRB timeouts" on reboot (see here ). On the other hand, "better" doesn't necessarily equal "good" in this case. Although performance was better overall, it was still lagging despite applying some of the tweaks that have been suggested elsewhere on this forum. FreeBSD 13 ran faster on this system with a virtually identical setup (XFCE, firefox-esr, etc). I've also revisited OpenBSD 6.9 on this machine, with the same software/GUI setup, and it actually performs better on it than does NetBSD, much to my surprise given that OpenBSD is often said to be slow. I ended up deciding to try out 9.2 on a Thinkpad T550, which has almost identical specs to the X250 but twice as much RAM (16Gb). This is a productivity system on which I normally use Devuan as I need certain tools that I can't use on BSD. Since I had planned a fresh reinstall of Devuan Linux on that system anyway, I wanted to take some time to revisit NetBSD on the T550 out of sheer curiosity and to see how it performed there. Unfortunately, it proved to be identical to my experience on the Thinkpad X250. Despite having twice as much RAM, the system was pretty slow and I'd have Firefox crashing on me. I understand that memory management on NetBSD is different from Linux or the other BSDs, but still. I can't but conclude something is off there. By way of comparison, OpenBSD supports my Thinkpad buttons (backlight + volume control) out of the box. Touchpad two-finger scrolling + tapping works out of the box. Transferring files over the network is faster; installing packages doesn't lead to high RAM usage and having the CPU fan go crazy; firefox doesn't crash on me. It generally runs quiet. So I wanted to provide an overview here of some things I've observed, including some problems I encountered and have been unable to solve, whether on bare metal or in a virtual machine in certain cases. Hopefully this is useful to any NetBSD developers or users out there. If you know of any workarounds or solutions, please do let me know! Performance This is the main problem for me. RAM usage is uncomfortably high for me: -> when or after installing packages -> when performing file operations -> when syncing over the network -> when using Firefox, Libreoffice, etc. CPU runs rather too hot Network file transfers ( rsync , ssh / sftp , etc) are slower than I'm used to Suspend-to-RAM generally works though it's somewhat slow "wake on lid open" works nevertheless, there are issues after wake-up: 1. mouse does not work 2. wifi/network sometimes does not work if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } SOLUTION: unknown Touchpad tapping works out of the box two-finger scrolling does not work no matter what sysctl settings I try Note that this is a Synaptics touchpad. I believe having read here somewhere that it is not supported on such touchpads. On a X250 with a 12.5" screen this is a bummer because I typically use the touchpad a lot more with such a compact laptop. SOLUTION: unkown Thinkpad buttons do not work out of the box As noted, these do work on FreeBSD (mostly) and OpenBSD (perfectly). SOLUTION: unkown WORKAROUND: sudo intel_backlight 50% LibreOffice version 7 -> does not respect theme settings I've tested this under LXQT, XFCE, Fluxbox, etc. Even when I use gtk tools to select the appropriate theme or have an appropriately set up gtk3 config file, it just does not work. I only got it to work, briefly, with Libreoffice v6 which appears to rely on Linux emulation and use gtk2, and after a reboot I was back to square one. Note that I have not experienced this on either FreeBSD or OpenBSD. On those systems, libreoffice integrates the theme as it ought to. SOLUTION: unknown WORKAROUND: install v6 with linux emulation? VIM issues set termguicolors in conjunction with colorscheme mycolorscheme in ~/.vimrc are not honored in terminal windows however, it does display correctly in gvim Tested with: qterminal xfce4-terminal py39-terminator Note that I initially tested this with only vim installed. I later figured I might need to install vim-gtk3 instead so I did, but the result was the same. This works as expected under FreeBSD and OpenBSD so I don't know how to explain this. I've dug up information online since others have had similar problems under Linux but none of it helped. Works fine in gvim but not in any terminal I tried. Because of that, I didn't attempt to try any plugins like airline or vim bundle. I rely on vim for my workflow a heck of a lot so this is a pain for me. SOLUTION: unknown WORKAROUND: use gvim XFCE as pointed out before, it does not detect the battery additional cursor themes such as DMZ are not detected and unavailable in the XFCE settings after installing Papirus Icon Theme (whether through pkgin or manually), it's just impossible to change the icon of the application or whisker menu because, as it loads the available icons, the CPU starts going crazy, memory goes up, and xfce4-panel basically ends up freezing or crashing. I admit this operation is rather slow and resource-intensive for me on any system I've used (including Linux) but at least the icon selector eventually opens. Worked for me on FreeBSD and OpenBSD so I don't know why it struggles under NetBSD. As regards the battery problem, I used watch 'envstat | grep %' in a terminal to keep an eye on it. Also, as noted in my other thread, lxqt does detect the battery but also displays an icon for some internal battery that is not present in any of my (second-hand) Thinkpads. SOLUTION: currently none but @rvp is working on a patch WORKAROUND: check with 'envstat' from terminal Sound mostly works fine in 9.2 for me, so that's a good thing! nevertheless, I've noticed something weird: => when using the touchpad: - sound often hangs or has hiccups - at times it 'reverbs' - or has 'static' distortion for a while !! This does not occur when I use the mouse exclusively SOLUTION: unknown WORKAROUND: don't touch the touchpad? Virtualization issues Virtualization is one of the main reasons I have a preference for NetBSD and why it would, in theory, be a viable alternative for Linux. Since I need to use software that is only available for Windows, I rely on virtualization a lot for productivity/work. On those systems, I want an OS that is reliable, stable, secure and has good virtualization capabilities so I can avoid having to run Windows natively on one or several dedicated machines solely to be able to use a few Windows-only packages. With VirtualBox (which I avoid these days) or Qemu/KVM under Linux I can use Windows machines seamlessly. FreeBSD has seriously let me down there (but that's another story) as I discovered VirtualBox didn't function well. The other alternatives are not a good match. OpenBSD (like FreeBSD) only appears to have the "tcg" accelerator available, which won't do for me, even though these operating systems are, of course, great in other ways. NetBSD provides Qemu with nvmm and haxm . Unfortunately, I haven't managed to install a Windows VM using nvmm . It boots from the install iso then just hangs and never gets on with it. Compiling haxm from pkgsrc failed on every single attempt. I hope to try again in the time to come but I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick to Devuan for such purposes in the foreseeable future. It's just too critical to me. Conclusion In itself, none of this necessarily "disqualifies" NetBSD as an OS. I could still use it for other purposes, as a server or for strictly personal productivity that doesn't require virtualization. There is still a lot to like about it and I will keep following the project as I've done for quite some time. Yet given the above-mentioned issues, I'm afraid it's not going to do for me at this stage as a full-fledged alternative to Linux. Even for personal productivity, given those issues, it's a bit too much of a hassle. But perhaps I've overlooked something and there are solutions for these issues. So, let me know your thoughts or possible solutions. I'm still going to reinstall NetBSD after having given OpenBSD its proper dues, though I'm sticking to Linux on my work machines for the time being. Cheers! EDIT: I want to add that all of the above issues I've had on bare metal were also present (if applicable) when running NetBSD in a virtual machine

General impressions after using NetBSD 9.2 on a Thinkpad X250

netneo

Hi all,

You may have seen my earlier thread in which I did a quick and dirty review of NetBSD 9.1 on a Thinkpad X250. Since 9.2 came out, I went ahead and did a clean install of that version to see how it compares.

This post is basically a bit of a follow-up on the previous one. I'm keeping it separate since this is based on my experiences with 9.2.

Overall, I must say the experience was certainly better on this particular machine. Version 9.2 felt stabler than its predecessor and I no longer experienced any "RIRB timeouts" on reboot (see here).

On the other hand, "better" doesn't necessarily equal "good" in this case. Although performance was better overall, it was still lagging despite applying some of the tweaks that have been suggested elsewhere on this forum. FreeBSD 13 ran faster on this system with a virtually identical setup (XFCE, firefox-esr, etc). I've also revisited OpenBSD 6.9 on this machine, with the same software/GUI setup, and it actually performs better on it than does NetBSD, much to my surprise given that OpenBSD is often said to be slow.

I ended up deciding to try out 9.2 on a Thinkpad T550, which has almost identical specs to the X250 but twice as much RAM (16Gb). This is a productivity system on which I normally use Devuan as I need certain tools that I can't use on BSD. Since I had planned a fresh reinstall of Devuan Linux on that system anyway, I wanted to take some time to revisit NetBSD on the T550 out of sheer curiosity and to see how it performed there.

Unfortunately, it proved to be identical to my experience on the Thinkpad X250. Despite having twice as much RAM, the system was pretty slow and I'd have Firefox crashing on me. I understand that memory management on NetBSD is different from Linux or the other BSDs, but still. I can't but conclude something is off there.

By way of comparison, OpenBSD supports my Thinkpad buttons (backlight + volume control) out of the box. Touchpad two-finger scrolling + tapping works out of the box. Transferring files over the network is faster; installing packages doesn't lead to high RAM usage and having the CPU fan go crazy; firefox doesn't crash on me. It generally runs quiet.

So I wanted to provide an overview here of some things I've observed, including some problems I encountered and have been unable to solve, whether on bare metal or in a virtual machine in certain cases. Hopefully this is useful to any NetBSD developers or users out there. If you know of any workarounds or solutions, please do let me know!

Performance

This is the main problem for me.

RAM usage is uncomfortably high for me:
-> when or after installing packages
-> when performing file operations
-> when syncing over the network
-> when using Firefox, Libreoffice, etc.
CPU runs rather too hot
Network file transfers (rsync, ssh/sftp, etc) are slower than I'm used to

Suspend-to-RAM

generally works though it's somewhat slow
"wake on lid open" works

nevertheless, there are issues after wake-up:

1. mouse does not work 
2. wifi/network sometimes does not work

SOLUTION: unknown

Touchpad

tapping works out of the box
two-finger scrolling does not work no matter what sysctl settings I try

Note that this is a Synaptics touchpad. I believe having read here somewhere that it is not supported on such touchpads. On a X250 with a 12.5" screen this is a bummer because I typically use the touchpad a lot more with such a compact laptop.

SOLUTION: unkown

Thinkpad buttons

do not work out of the box

As noted, these do work on FreeBSD (mostly) and OpenBSD (perfectly).

SOLUTION: unkown
WORKAROUND: sudo intel_backlight 50%

LibreOffice

version 7 -> does not respect theme settings

I've tested this under LXQT, XFCE, Fluxbox, etc. Even when I use gtk tools to select the appropriate theme or have an appropriately set up gtk3 config file, it just does not work. I only got it to work, briefly, with Libreoffice v6 which appears to rely on Linux emulation and use gtk2, and after a reboot I was back to square one.

Note that I have not experienced this on either FreeBSD or OpenBSD. On those systems, libreoffice integrates the theme as it ought to.

SOLUTION: unknown
WORKAROUND: install v6 with linux emulation?

VIM issues

set termguicolors in conjunction with colorscheme mycolorscheme in ~/.vimrc are not honored in terminal windows
however, it does display correctly in gvim

Tested with:

qterminal
xfce4-terminal
py39-terminator

Note that I initially tested this with only vim installed. I later figured I might need to install vim-gtk3 instead so I did, but the result was the same. This works as expected under FreeBSD and OpenBSD so I don't know how to explain this.

I've dug up information online since others have had similar problems under Linux but none of it helped. Works fine in gvim but not in any terminal I tried. Because of that, I didn't attempt to try any plugins like airline or vim bundle. I rely on vim for my workflow a heck of a lot so this is a pain for me.

SOLUTION: unknown
WORKAROUND: use gvim

XFCE

as pointed out before, it does not detect the battery
additional cursor themes such as DMZ are not detected and unavailable in the XFCE settings
after installing Papirus Icon Theme (whether through pkgin or manually), it's just impossible to change the icon of the application or whisker menu because, as it loads the available icons, the CPU starts going crazy, memory goes up, and xfce4-panel basically ends up freezing or crashing. I admit this operation is rather slow and resource-intensive for me on any system I've used (including Linux) but at least the icon selector eventually opens. Worked for me on FreeBSD and OpenBSD so I don't know why it struggles under NetBSD.

As regards the battery problem, I used watch 'envstat | grep %' in a terminal to keep an eye on it. Also, as noted in my other thread, lxqt does detect the battery but also displays an icon for some internal battery that is not present in any of my (second-hand) Thinkpads.

SOLUTION: currently none but @rvp is working on a patch
WORKAROUND: check with 'envstat' from terminal

Sound

mostly works fine in 9.2 for me, so that's a good thing!
nevertheless, I've noticed something weird:
=> when using the touchpad:
- sound often hangs or has hiccups
- at times it 'reverbs'
- or has 'static' distortion for a while

!! This does not occur when I use the mouse exclusively

SOLUTION: unknown
WORKAROUND: don't touch the touchpad?

Virtualization issues

Virtualization is one of the main reasons I have a preference for NetBSD and why it would, in theory, be a viable alternative for Linux. Since I need to use software that is only available for Windows, I rely on virtualization a lot for productivity/work. On those systems, I want an OS that is reliable, stable, secure and has good virtualization capabilities so I can avoid having to run Windows natively on one or several dedicated machines solely to be able to use a few Windows-only packages.

With VirtualBox (which I avoid these days) or Qemu/KVM under Linux I can use Windows machines seamlessly. FreeBSD has seriously let me down there (but that's another story) as I discovered VirtualBox didn't function well. The other alternatives are not a good match. OpenBSD (like FreeBSD) only appears to have the "tcg" accelerator available, which won't do for me, even though these operating systems are, of course, great in other ways.

NetBSD provides Qemu with nvmm and haxm. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to install a Windows VM using nvmm. It boots from the install iso then just hangs and never gets on with it. Compiling haxm from pkgsrc failed on every single attempt. I hope to try again in the time to come but I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick to Devuan for such purposes in the foreseeable future. It's just too critical to me.

Conclusion

In itself, none of this necessarily "disqualifies" NetBSD as an OS. I could still use it for other purposes, as a server or for strictly personal productivity that doesn't require virtualization. There is still a lot to like about it and I will keep following the project as I've done for quite some time. Yet given the above-mentioned issues, I'm afraid it's not going to do for me at this stage as a full-fledged alternative to Linux. Even for personal productivity, given those issues, it's a bit too much of a hassle. But perhaps I've overlooked something and there are solutions for these issues.

So, let me know your thoughts or possible solutions. I'm still going to reinstall NetBSD after having given OpenBSD its proper dues, though I'm sticking to Linux on my work machines for the time being.

Cheers!

EDIT: I want to add that all of the above issues I've had on bare metal were also present (if applicable) when running NetBSD in a virtual machine

rvp

netneo Can you post a top output so that we can see what your mem. usage looks like?

About that touchpad+sound issue: I wonder if the touchpad driver uses polling insted of interrupts?

Edit: also post /var/run/dmesg.boot and the output of intrctl list. For the intrctl, do two of them & use the touchpad in between.

rvp

netneo VIM issues

Easily fixed: See post #31.

~~Workaround: Can you remove set termguicolors and then run vim like this:~~

$ env TERM=xterm-256color vim ...

~~Edit: this looks like a BSD-curses issue.~~
~~Not sure what's going on here:~~

VIM v8.2.2557 from the binary package doesn't honour set termguicolors, but compiling the same version from source (on 9.99.82), with similar options to configure as in pkgsrc produces a binary which correctly displays the colours specified.

~~Can you rebuild vim from pkgsrc so that it uses ncursesw/tinfow instead; or build using the standard GNU ./configure; make; make install?~~

rvp

netneo Thinkpad buttons

XFCE should let you map WMI hotkeys to commands you can run. (Currently the WMI keys only work on some laptops--some ACPI/WMI/DRMKMS kernel glue is missing in NetBSD.)

rvp

netneo RAM usage is uncomfortably high for me:

Post top output.

tcmart14

So I can't comment on everything. However, I believe the RAM thing is a misunderstanding between how other operating systems manage RAM and how NetBSD does. My understanding is the high RAM usage is because NetBSD will cache as much as possible and will only free up the RAM when a process that is running needs it. Free memory sitting around serves no value. But if you cache something, it makes it faster to reopen. So think of it this way. You open a document, edit it, save it, close the program. NetBSD will not free the memory from that task unless another program needs it. If another program doesnt need it, it wont free it. The idea is, if you open up that text editor again, the code is already cached in memory and NetBSD does not need to make a call to the disk for an I/O operating to retrieve the code segements and load it into memory. It has gotten better, but read/write from backing store compared to main memory (system memory/RAM), the main memory is gonna win everytime. However, if RAM is full, but a lot of cache and there is not sufficient RAM to open another program not already cached, NetBSD will then dump some of the cached memory in RAM to open up space for the new program.

And of course, this may not apply just to programs. It can apply to files to. You open a webpage, it might cache that in RAM since the space is there and not being used for something else, so if you open that page again, it should open faster. This is similar to what your browser does with its browser cache, but on a system wide level.

So while it looks like an issue. It isnt. It is just a different way of managing resources from other operating systems and a misunderstanding of how RAM operates. Eating more RAM doesnt inherently hack away at system performance unless you require to much and go into SWAP space. Then it goes back to having to make i/o calls to the hard drive which is always gonna be slower than RAM. However, enough processes in the queue waiting to be ran will cause performance issues. A lot of disk read/writes will cause performance issues as the i/o queue has a big backlog and slower read/write times.

nia

tcmart14 We explained this last time and OP ignored us, so, whatever. NetBSD has ports that run on several megabytes of memory, the i386 port can boot on around 24-32. If it had problems managing memory we'd have noticed...

This isn't a customer support hotline, we're all volunteers. I develop NetBSD on an i5 ThinkPad X250 and use that machine daily for music production, web browsing, and programming, so I'm well aware of how it runs on that hardware. If you think you've found bugs, feel free to report them through the proper channels rather than a post on a user community forum.

netneo

tcmart14 My understanding is the high RAM usage is because NetBSD will cache as much as possible and will only free up the RAM when a process that is running needs it.

I appreciate your input on this. Still, as the title says, I'm speaking of "impressions" here. Despite noticeable improvements for me using 9.2 compared to 9.1 and bearing in mind that NetBSD does indeed handle memory differently from other systems, the problem is that for me it's been far more sluggish in the end than any other system I've tried on the X250 (and/or T550) so far (Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD 6.9 - though I must add that 6.8 was slower). In itself, I don't really care much about how the system handles memory, as long as performance remains good. I'm just an "end user" basically. But that's really the issue I'm having here, despite applying several performance tweaks and using intel-microcode. I wish I had the level of expertise (and the time and patience) allowing me to provide objective benchmarks but that's a bit beyond me. With that said, everything I have written here is just the way I have perceived it, on my particular systems, with no intention of trashing NetBSD whatsoever. When I have issues with Linux (and that does happen on occasion), I state the problems, try to find solutions, and I don't go around trashing it. I thought that might be worth adding here.

netneo

rvp Thanks, rvp. I will do a clean reinstall as soon as I can and check the output of intrctl list. As for dmesg and the likes, I posted some in my previous thread for 9.1 but I'll make sure to post some output for 9.2 when I get around to it, as well.

nia Same goes for the Gtk theming issue.

netneo

nia We explained this last time and OP ignored us, so, whatever.

Frankly, I am pissed off reading this. I have absolutely, positively NOT ignored you on this matter at all. Do you seriously think I have gone through the trouble of writing all the above, my findings and observations, explaining how I tried to solve the issues, only to hear from you and @pin that I am simply ignoring you and it is all just in my head ? Because that seems to be what you are implying.

nia This isn't a customer support hotline, we're all volunteers.

Is that how I come across to you? Do you want me to just write nothing but "praise" instead of pointing out the issues I've had so they may be resolved or taken into account? Did I bash NetBSD here? I surely didn't write all this with that intention.

I have been ging to great lengths to learn about, use, test, and get your "product" (since you said "customer hotline") to work for me as an alternative to Linux after lots of quiet personal research prior to posting here, and have also made a small donation to the NetBSD project as a token of my appreciation. And you come back to me with this condescending attitude?

You are simply unwilling to accept that maybe, just maybe, despite my realizing RAM allocation is different under NetBSD (which I perfectly understand by now), performance is still not good to me, even compared to OpenBSD. I am posting this to help your project and users, not just to help myself. What is your proposed solution? That I buy different hardware? We are talking about a X250 and a T550. Business laptops from 2015 or 2016 or so. The X250 is mentioned on the NetBSD Wiki. Perhaps my expectations were wrong.

pin nia Same goes for the Gtk theming issue.

Yes, because I only made 10 attempts at figuring something out that and browsing through the libreoffice directories to figure and compare them with other *BSD installations and Linux, even going through the Arch wiki and so on, endlessly, hoping to figure this out on my own before "complaining" here. If I posted that it does not work for me, it's not just on a single attempt, but after having thoroughly looked into this. But I am not a developer. I expect this sort of stuff to just pretty much "work". OpenBSD and FreeBSD handled this fine for me. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for everybody.

I thought I'd contributed by posting this. I suppose I didn't.

netneo

nia If you think you've found bugs, feel free to report them through the proper channels rather than a post on a user community forum.

Okay, so please do tell me what this user community forum is for then if not to share user experiences? Am I not a user, perhaps? Do you approve of reviews only if it's all praise? You only pointed out just now you use NetBSD on a X250. Well, why not share your input then, if this is a user community?

What you don't seem to get is that I am talking about performance. While I initially was tempted to associate the issue with RAM usage, I realized that was the wrong way of looking at it so that is not how I approached my 9.2 installation. Still, when you have a sluggish system that doesn't even let you change the XFCE whisker menu icon and seeing all the RAM go up during that very operation then it is, I believe, quite understandable that you'd conflate the two. Yet I am very well aware performance and RAM handling aren't one and the same thing. Did I also mention network file transfers are slower compared to any other system I've run on the X250 (or any of my Thinkpads for that matter)?

netneo

Frankly, I am pissed off reading this.

Wow! Honestly,... go figure!

only to hear from you and @pin that I am simply ignoring you and it is all
just in my head ? Because that seems to be what you are implying.

No, it's not only in your head...
I've experienced the same on two linux distros, one of them Ubuntu based.

Yes, because I only made 10 attempts at figuring something out that and browsing through the libreoffice directories to figure....

As mentioned, I had the same issue on Linux.

netneo

pin Wow! Honestly,... go figure!

Considering that I have not ignored your or anyone's remarks/tips/advice here or elsewhere, I don't need any smug remarks suggesting I'm basically a moron who's "ignored" your advice because I haven't.

Read my post again. I'm talking about performance. That's the headline under which I posted it. You can keep defending how NetBSD handles RAM if that's what you like but that's totally not the point anymore here for me. It's that I'm having performance issues and I'm simply reporting on that here, hoping to figure out why that is and what can be done.

Would you rather I cheer and say "wow, works awesome, no issues at all" if that's not the case? Reporting a problem means I'm interested in the system, see how it works and, if possible, find solutions to issues I've encountered. Many would probably just abandon and leave it at that.

pin As mentioned, I had the same issue on Linux.

Yes, and when I pointed out the issue persisted for me under NetBSD, you basically respond by saying "it works for me". Good for you, but that doesn't mean it'll magically work for me also. I appreciate you tried to help me out and it's obviously not anyone's fault but I've tried everything I could think of on my own as well. I seem to recall @neubaer reporting the same problem (see here).

With that said, for what it's worth, I've submitted pretty much all the issues I've found to the NetBSD bug mailing lists.

rvp

With all due respect (salaamu, salaamu) to @pin & @nia, let's get back to the technical discussion, shall we?

That touchpad + sound issue looks like bug: I re-enabled my touchpad in BIOS and played round with it while playing videos, and, there were no issues--as expected. Post a dmesg output, mate. There'll be something in it for sure.

For the slow graphics:

Try Option "AccelMethod" "UXA" in the Xorg cfg. (if you have an Intel card)
Disable the compositor in XFCE.

netneo

rvp Okay thanks rvp, I've reported it to the bug list though I'm not sure if it's made it there yet (EDIT: looks like it has)

For what it's worth, here's my dmesg output.
And these are some pms errors I get that I suppose could be related.

I'll try your suggestions as soon as possible and report back.

rvp

netneo You have driver/HW issues:

$ fgrep -i error dmesg.txt
[     1.000000] RTC BIOS diagnostic error 0x80<clock_battery>
[     1.000003] ACPI Error: Needed type [Reference], found [Integer] 0xffffe5d492d6d828 (20190405/exresop-114)
[     1.000003] ACPI Error: AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE, While resolving operands for [OpcodeName unavailable] (20190405/dswexec-500)
[     1.000003] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_PR.CPU0._PDC due to previous error (AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE) (20190405/psparse-581)
[     1.044299] hdaudio0: autoconfiguration error: RIRB timeout
[     1.044299] hdaudio0: autoconfiguration error: RIRB timeout
[     5.782173] WARNING: 2 errors while detecting hardware; check system log.
[   216.275986] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
[   230.571001] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
[   232.571703] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: could not add MAC context (error 35)
[   251.268259] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
[   253.268960] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: could not add MAC context (error 35)
[   272.965868] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
[   274.966569] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: could not add MAC context (error 35)
$

Taking these in sequence:

[     1.000000] RTC BIOS diagnostic error 0x80<clock_battery>
...
[     5.802180] WARNING: clock gained 6 days

Is one of your batteries not working? Loose connection? Check BIOS date and time.

[     1.000003] x2APIC available but disabled by DMAR table

[     1.000003] ACPI Error: Needed type [Reference], found [Integer] 0xffffe5d492d6d828 (20190405/exresop-114)
[     1.000003] ACPI Error: AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE, While resolving operands for [OpcodeName unavailable] (20190405/dswexec-500)
[     1.000003] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_PR.CPU0._PDC due to previous error (AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE) (20190405/psparse-581)

This is a BIOS bug. Update your BIOS.

[   216.275986] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
[   230.571001] iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error

Driver issue. File a bug against iwm.
Are you having network speed issues with your wired, or, your wireless connection?
Have you tried an i3perf test using both?

[  7476.648096] pms_input: unusual delay (0.060029 s), scheduling reset
[  7631.198163] pms_input: unusual delay (0.050026 s), scheduling reset
[  7708.288097] pms_input: unusual delay (0.060029 s), scheduling reset

Driver issue again. Explans the audio glitches. File a bug against pms/synaptics.

Edit: before filing a bug, try the latest -HEAD image; then, if it still doesn't work there, file a bug against that instead of 9.2 or 9.1. Bug fixes first go into -HEAD, then are back-ported into -STABLE as needed. And don't worry, -HEAD is actually quite -STABLE for daily use (usually)😁.

tcmart14

Mhmm, maybe I should take a closer look at the dmesg on my 2009 Mac mini. It too is quiet a bit slow on the network when it uses a wifi connection. I ended up doing a wired connection to it (it is also mostly a local server, so wanted a better connection for it than wifi), but would still like the transfer speeds to be better on wifi in the event I ever repurpose it to something more than just a file server. Its not the same driver, but some of the issues you are having are similar.

rvp

netneo Performance

This is the main problem for me.

Could be related to the touchpad issue.

If the driver is flaky enough with your touchpad HW as to cause audio drop-outs, then it can also cause all your other performance issues as well.

I recommend you try -HEAD first, to see if has a fix, and if it doesn't, then just disable the touchpad in BIOS.

netneo

@rvp Thanks a lot for your feedback and advice! I'm taking notes of all the things you're suggesting. There are a few things you mentioned there I hadn't looked into since it didn't seem to pose any problems with other systems so I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed it wasn't going to affect my NetBSD installation. Anyway, I'll take some time out so I can properly test all of this while collecting as much info as I possibly can (dmesg, top, logs, errors, etc). And file bugs if need be. I'll get back to you asap but bear with me though. Thanks!

EDIT: as regards BIOS and ACPI, I'm going to provide new dmesg outputs after a completely fresh and full reinstall of 9.2 to be on the safe side. The ACPI errors are present on another Thinkpad as well but have never caused any issues for me so it was never much of a concern to me so far. I believe the BIOS is up-to-date but I'll have to double-check that. I interpreted the two hardware errors it reported as being related to audio (see the "RIRB timeout" it reported twice). On my current quick NetBSD installation it's not reporting any problem with the clock, though. Anyway, quite a few things to look into and test! I'll try -HEAD first (already downloaded) and then do a clean reinstall of 9.2. Will be reporting back in full once I've been able to go through everything. Hopefully soon.

rvp

netneo The ACPI errors are present on another Thinkpad as well but have never caused any issues for me so it was never much of a concern to me so far.

Not usually a problem--except for programs like acpidump which will fail part-way when it hits that mismatch. What I meant was that, to fix this error, you need a BIOS update. Both Linux and NetBSD report a similar error on my laptop as well.