I have been going through some similar performance issues with an NSLU2
running Slimserver. I have found the following made some improvements
to usability:

1. Reduce the number of plugins loaded at startup by Slimserver to the
bare minimum - these must use some resource somewhere right?

2. Cut the web interface down to bare HTML with no fancy skins - I
think the scheme is called "basic". This definitely makes the web
interface snappier.

3. Eliminate unneccessary services from the NSLU2. If you don't need
samba or http, don't run them.

4. "clock" the NSLU2 as described earlier in the thread.

My girlfriend now considers the SB2 response times to be "ok". There
are no breaks/pauses in playback. Menu navigation on the SB2 is
acceptable but could be quicker. Scrolling through artists or albums is
fine but sometimes there are pauses of up to 20 seconds when pressing
"back". I imagine this is when the SB2 has to talk to Slimserver to
rebuild the previous menu (big list if you were browsing artists). 

My next plans are:

1. Add a USB2 flash drive (256MB) to put /var in so that the HDD spins
down (Unslung 5.5 log activity stops this from happening!). I wonder if
I could also use this for swap space as the NSLU2 is definitely memory
bound. I wonder if moving some I/O to another device will also improve
things slightly.

2. Continue to tinker with indexing in the SQLite database. I have
added some indeces to various tables to see if there is any improvement
on browsing etc. So far, nothing major plus there is a danger of causing
re-scans to take longer due to additional index maintenance.

After this, I'm not sure what else I can try. I really liked the snappy
performance I got when running Slimserver on OSX but I don't want to
leave my eMac on all day every day. Plan B is an oldish Toshiba laptop
I've got running GNU/Linux. It's low power and low noise but it's not
as cool and minimalist as the NSLU2!


-- 
nano2nd
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