Linux kernel >=2.6.2-rc2 very slow

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

I've got such an impression >=linux-2.6.2-rc2 is very slow on P4 machines with HT support. I've talked to a few people, they claim the same.

System specs:
i875P mainboard with a P4 3.2GHz HT (D1) processor.

emerge info:

curtis119 · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 1:42 pm Post subject:

I experienced a slowdown with that kernel as well. I have an athlonXP. I also experienced jittery mouse and a very BIG lag in switching workspaces and X refresh rate. The new 2.6.3-r1seems to have fixed the problems. This has nothing to do with HyperThreading in my case (athlons don't have this feature) but it still points to a general lagginess in that particular kernel.
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neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Humm... What's the reason then? It's damn laggy and just impossible to work on a 2.6.3 kernel, same with 2.6.2 final (2.6.2-rc's are fine).
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neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.3-r1 seems to fix this but it's still pretty slow, I'd say it's vanilla-slow (compared to regular mm-sources) but at least it's usable.
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neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Even mm-sources-2.6.3-r2 is slower than all previous releases.
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vificunero · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 10:05 pm Post subject:

Well same problem here: even if with gentoo-2.6.3 things seem a little bit faster. The big problem is Xfree: it needs a lot of cpu resources, more than with other kernels lik 2.4 and 2.6.0.

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Yeah, and somehing for some reason eats my whole RAM and if loaded swap too.
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AlterEgo · Veteran Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 1619

Since using 2.6.3-mm, I feel that very specific things have slowed down immensely:
opening and closing files in OpenOffice.org, and all other compression-related activities (tar, gzip, bzip2).
Changing schedulers makes no difference.

I have checked my harddisk perfomance using hdparm, but that seems fine.

TinheadNed · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2004 5:21 pm Post subject:

I seem to get periods of about 5 seconds when X stops. But the news ticker keeps scrolling and oggs keep playing. It seemed to happen in linux-2.6.3-rc2-mm1 and has hung about ever since, except 2.6.3-mm2 and vanilla segfaulted on start on my desktop due to gameport cockups, and -mm1 refuses to compile on my laptop with a linker error.

I feel jinxed.

usingloser · Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:21 am Post subject:

painfully slow.....
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To · Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 9:30 am Post subject:

I thought I was the only one :oops:

Tó
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neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Obviously you're not the only one...

If I only knew what's broken there... Any ideas what might cause this noticeable slowdown?

The only one working fine for me is still 2.6.2-rc2-mm1.
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Steffen · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 159

Slow for me, too. Whenever I compile something audio skips like hell.

I don't know exactly when it started, but 2.6.2 might be possible.

usingloser · Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:46 pm Post subject:

I had to quit using a bloated wm, just to deal with it. Enlightenment isn't so bad, but obviously not a good solution

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neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

I would appreciate if you post your emerge info so we could find out what's similar on our systems, so we can find the reason for the slowdown. Obviously not everyone's systems are affected.
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Steffen · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 159

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Well, since it's architecture independent, according to curtis119'sd post, I assume it's an issue of glibc-2.3.3_pre20040207-r0 and/or GCC.

I'll try to recompile with stable GCC and glibc. There's also this post: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=892613#892613
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Steffen · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 159

Applied the CFLAGS mentioned in this thread (-pipe -finline-functions -finline-limit=662 -mfpmath=sse), compiled the kernel, rebooted, compiled kdelibs while playing an MP3 and then some kind of IO-Error stopped the kdelibs compilation and a few seconds later my computer freezed and rebooted after another second or so.

Now using the "unoptimized" kernel image again.

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Having some fun with that glibc...

So LoveChild was right on that, Steffen!

By the way, you guys happen to use NPTL'ed glibc instead of LinuxThreads?

I'm confused as for what it might be due to.
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Steffen · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 159

I'm using NPTL since half a year or so, because it is said to be better / faster. I didn't notice an increase in speed, but didn't encounter any problems, too, so there is no reason to go back to LinuxThreads for me.

kwaakie · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 11:41 am Post subject:

Steffen · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2002 Posts: 159

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

kwaakie: can see it in emerge info posted above

Got NPTL'ed system too.

glibc doesn't want to install (stable one).
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neonik

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Bague · Apprentice Joined: 09 Feb 2004 Posts: 292

Hmmm, when I first upgraded to 2.6, I had a massive slowdown, but that is because the kernel came with a bunch of intel crap already enabled, and I use an AMDXP. Before I disabled the etra useless stuff (including an extra VIDEO chipset), it would take 5 secs for Password to come up when I typed su. When emerging, it took 5-10 mins to display "calculating dependancies". I disabled a bunch of (but certainly not all) useless things, and now I seem to be close to my correct speed. I was happy when I could type frozen-bubble and have a game fully running in ~10 secs.

neonik · Guru Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 501

Thanks to Con Kolivas for pointing me out that dma might be a cause of that all, we can probably finally resolve issues with 2.6.3 kernel releases. He's absolutely right on that. It's caused by disabled DMA here. Try running hdparm /dev/hda (or which ever HDD you got). If you see using_dma = 0 (off), then make sure to enable it (hdparm -d1 /dev/hda), which I personally can't perform here