Very slow performance--Possibly I/O related

[erektheloser]

I've been using Gentoo for about 5 months on a PII 366 laptop. I've got a pair of duplicate HD's and have Gentoo on one and OBSD 3.2 on the other. The box only serves as my 'hang out on the couch' box. The only service that's running is sshd.

As it stands, the Gentoo install is about half the speed of the OBSD install. From eveything that I've been able to find, Gentoo is one of the 'faster' OS'es around... This speed difference is a real bother. If I'm doinging an 'emerge sync' the box becomes almost unuseable. God forbid that I'm doing a kernel compile while trying to do something....

I'm looking for _any_ suggestions as I've exhausted what I know and can't really seem to find a reason. Anyone have any suggestions? More detailed info is available at: http://www.theadamsfamily.net/~erek/gentoo.txt

Thanks!

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etl

[sklettke]

I'd try using one of the kernel sources "enhanced" for desktop interactivity such as the ck-sources for the 2.4 kernel or mm-sources or love-sources for the 2.6 kernel.

They make a world of difference. Even my P4 1.8Ghz notebook would lag noticeably when playing music in xmms and emerging anything, if I was using a standard kernel. However, with the ck-sources I could emerge multiple programs at the same time and still be able to listen to non-skipping music.

Scott
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Jab.ID: scottk@jabber.org

Kernel: 2.6.11-rc3-nitro0
KDE 3.3.2 with Xorg
MythBox: 2.6.5-gentoo-dev-r2 (LVMed 360GB in XFS; Athlon 2500+)