Without seeing your actual server.log file it is hard to say very much.
I did a test where jnm-fast was started with minthreads=2. I used nscp to change this to 12. Maybe the expectation is that 10 new threads will appear. However, new threads may never be created if the current number is enough. At any rate, you have to look at the log file to see that the threadpool is actually being used. You may have one threadpool sucking up all the requests.
Next test was to change my config to minthreads=12 for jnm-fast and restart. I got 10 extra threads at startup. So in this limited test, minthreads is working. I've done other tests which indicate that min/max are working. And the timeout is also working.
If you are really interested in using 4.5, maybe I should provide you the other changes I have made. But, I'll probably make further changes before they are accepted into AOLserver CVS. My C code changes allow the threadpools configuration in 4.0.10 to work, but you also need to replace the pools.tcl file.
One benefit is that you get a new command:
ns_pools query server method url
which returns the name of the threadpool which would be used for the given server, method and url.
