high load caused by I/O - a hint

Hello,

This is not strictly PostgreSQL performance hint, but may be
helpful to someone with problems like mine.

As I earlier posted, I was experiencing very high load average
on one of my Linux database servers (IBM eServer 345, SCSI disks on LSI
Logic controller) caused by I/O bottleneck.

INSERTs were really slow, even after many days of
tweaking PostgreSQL configuration. The problem appeared to be
in the Linux kernel itself - using acpi=ht and noapic boot parameters
solved my performance problems. Load average dropped below 1.0
(before, it was as high as ten in peak) and the database
works much, much faster.

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11.