Slow gentoo: DMA?

Elv13 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:24 am Post subject: Slow gentoo: DMA?

Hi, gentoo is very slow, it take like 20 second+ for open firefox
When i run hdparm -tT i get ~27mo/sec, a normal score for a laptop
but when i do dmesg i get some timeout and thing like that, any idea how to fix them?
ATI-IXP150 chips, 4200 rpm laptop drive (HDA)

Mallow005 · n00b Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 49 Location: CA

Looks like DMA is failing? What's your hdparm /dev/hda ?

Elv13 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 3:43 am Post subject:

Mallow005 · n00b Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 49 Location: CA

Hmm... that's a pretty impressive CPU too. On my laptop (1.6Ghz P4) it takes about 10-15 seconds to open firefox... that's comparable to yours, so maybe the harddrive speed is the bottleneck?

Elv13 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 3:43 pm Post subject:

i got a 3.06ghz P4M :roll:

it is always at 100% during the operation, this si not normal too but i have read many other simillar problem and it seem that when DMA is not working proprelly this kind of mouse freezing and 100% cpu usage is "normal"

dekon · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Aug 2005 Posts: 80

Gentree · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 8:23 pm Post subject:

one thing that strikes me is that you have IO support off. I would expect this to be 32bit.

I dont know if this is a result of the errors you get on boot or a mis-config.

Elv13 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 9:26 pm Post subject:

it is becose when i activate it my score drop from 27.53mb to 23.69...

bollucks · l33t Joined: 27 Oct 2004 Posts: 606

Again...

I/O support, unmask irq and multicount do nothing once DMA is enabled. They only affect PIO mode.

ColinK · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 142

If you'v got Gnome, take a look at the systemmonitor panel-applet (it displays IOWait-CPU-usage).

Because its faster on LiveCD, you should check your Kernel-config.

On a completely different system, I've got

v2.6.15 -> Device Drivers -> ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support:

Gentree · Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject:

Elv13 · Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:10 pm Post subject:

16b support:
1. 27.19
2. 27.29
3. 27.34
4. 27.34
5. 27.32

32:
1. 27.34
2. 27.23
3. 27.22
4. 24.54
5. 24.81

32 w/s:
1. 24.35
2. 24.93
3. 24.23
4. 23.90
5. 27.36

PyroBoy101 · Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject:

Might want to investigate the health of the drive. In linux you can use smartctl, or outside of Linux I usually use Hitachi's DFT.
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Gentree · Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 9:25 am Post subject:

can you recap what you think the problem is (symptom not cause). You started by saying you thought these speeds were about right for a slow spinning disk like yours, so what are you trying to resolve?

if you want to monitor the disk you install smartmontools to run in the b/g and log any errors from the disk.
[ebuild R ] sys-apps/smartmontools-5.36

the variations you have on the last block of figures is rather large. Are you running these tests under a mega window manager like KDE? If so there are heaps of processes running which will mess up the results of your hardware tests.

make sure you run hdparm from a login shell.

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Elv13 · Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 11:50 pm Post subject:

1. hdparm is at boot runlevel
2. am trying to find why aplication are this slow
*yes i have the right sub architecture in my make.conf and -02 -pipe

Gentree · Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 2:41 pm Post subject:

Elv13 · Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:02 pm Post subject:

EXT3 for my stable install
ReiserFS for my test install (where i try things before installing on my stable install (kde 3.5.2, XGL and stuff like that)
EXT2 for my boot partition

it is not really faster on my test install

Gentree · Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 6:08 am Post subject:

Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

I have to admit that ReiserFS really isn't doing much for me in the speed department. It may not be fragmenting files, but it's sure as hell fragmenting directories, which are just as important for lots of tiny files. It's still the most space-efficient filesystem I know of, though. Is the frag problem solved in R4, does anyone know?
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Gentree · Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject:

How are you assessing the level of fragmentation? I've been using R4 for about 2yrs now , for some of that time as root partition and subjectively I dont see it slowing down as much as reiserfs did.

If you have an objective test I may be able to answer your question.

Also realise that R4 is to reiserfs as NTFS is to vfat, it's not to be seen as version 4 of the same fs.

R4 has the advantage of atomic writes. I've had several power-outs on this box and it reboots afterwards to a working stable fs , with possibly some file updates lost that where not written to disk when it went down.

That's probably my main reason for using R4, it saves me buying a UPS :wink:

_________________
Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for.
Gentoo because I'm a masochist
AthlonXP-M on A7N8X. Portage ~x86

Elv13 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:44 pm Post subject:

i am talking about ext3

is XFS is a better choice for my next install (or cp -av this one)

Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

Elv13 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject:

ext3 can support bug file
i have 7gb ghost image (in 1 part) on my /home

Gentree · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject: