slow running gentoo

rubing · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 12:42 am Post subject: slow running gentoo

I recently tried running Puppy Linux on a laptop I have gentoo installed with XFCE wm. To my dismay I found puppy to run an order of magnitude faster than gentoo....even when I tried a xfce based puppy version.

I am guessing this means I have something incorrectly configured in the kernel?? Any advice on how to remedy my gentoo box??

thanks!

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23082

As a blind guess, are you using the right hard disk drivers? Many people choose the wrong driver and suffer very bad performance in disk heavy workloads. If this does not help, we need to know more about your system. Please provide the output of emerge --info ; zgrep -E '^[^#]' /proc/config.gz ; free ; lsmod when booted into Gentoo. Also, provide the output of lsmod when booted into Puppy. When does Puppy beat the Gentoo performance?

Try booting the Puppy Linux kernel with the Gentoo userland.

poly_poly-man · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:51 am Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:51 am Post subject:

Hi, can you post this :

rubing · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:10 pm Post subject:

My system is slow when running any application...mouse is usually not a problem. Even the menus can take a while to popup (they are on auto hide).

here are the results from emerge --info, free, lsmod, fdisk -l.

I do not have the file /proc/config.gz
or the program hdparm

emerge --info:

Portage 2.1.4.5 (default/linux/x86/2008.0, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.25-gentoo-r8 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.25-gentoo-r8 i686 mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 4 Processor
Timestamp of tree: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:10:01 +0000
app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7-r1, 2.1.6-r1
dev-lang/python: 2.5.2-r7
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r2
sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1-r1
sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4
sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer nostrip sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ "
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise /usr/portage/local/layman/zugaina"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X acl alsa berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri fortran gdbm gpm hal iconv ipv6 isdnlog midi mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly openmp pam pcre perl pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl startup-notification sysfs tcpd truetype unicode x86 xorg xscreensaver zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="savage"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

free:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 237440 44388 193052 0 8792 21376
-/+ buffers/cache: 14220 223220
Swap: 506036 0 506036

lsmod:

Module Size Used by
snd_via82xx 22036 0
snd_ac97_codec 94176 1 snd_via82xx
ac97_bus 1408 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_mpu401_uart 6720 1 snd_via82xx
pcspkr 2304 0
rt73 214144 0
snd_rawmidi 20384 1 snd_mpu401_uart
parport_pc 24036 0
via686a 12620 0

fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe3eae3ea

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 5 40131 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 6 68 506047+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3 69 6021 47817472+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 6022 7296 10241437+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 6022 7168 9213246 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 7169 7296 1028128+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

rubing · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:35 am Post subject:

I just installed hdparm.

here is the result of hdparm -tT /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 102 MB in 2.01 seconds = 50.69 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 6 MB in 3.53 seconds = 1.70 MB/sec

poly_poly-man · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:34 am Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:05 am Post subject:

You need to enable that for sure.

Look mine :

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23082

poly_poly-man · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:11 pm Post subject:

rubing · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:15 pm Post subject:

it looks like i had the wrong ide driver selected in my kernel config, so i fixed. things have def perked up a bit, but not as dramatically as i expected. Here is the result of hdparm -tT /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 190 MB in 2.01 seconds = 94.30 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 74 MB in 3.03 seconds = 24.44 MB/sec

from these numbers i would guess that DMA is still not enabled? I searched, but did not see any option in menuconfig for directly enabling DMA. How do I enable it?

Thx

gringo · Advocate Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 3793

rubing · Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:20 pm Post subject:

It seems to be running pretty well now...i think puppy is just a little faster cause i'm using jwm and seamonkey browser on it. DMA is indeed turned on according to hdparm or /proc/ide/hda

thanks for all the help guys!