On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 11:58:40AM +0100, Joost Kraaijeveld wrote: > I experiencing (unworkable) performance problems after a change in my > hardware configuration. I added a second drive (SAMSUNG SP2504C) to my > on-board Sil 3114 SATA controller). Largish I/O operations (e.g. start > applications of moderate size (Openoffice, Mozilla, Synaptic) , running > bonnie, hdparm -t /dev/sda, copying large files) lock up my Gnome > desktop and make my music stutter ,the first one being the nastiest ;-). > Running hdparm or bonnie do not show any performance problems in terms > of actual throughput (see below) but the unresponsive machine is quit > annoying. None of the perfomance problems appear if I do the same > operations on my 3Ware 9500 RAID 5 array. > > Does anyone recognize these problems and/or does that anyone have a > sollution? If not, could you give me an advise as to what I could do to > diagnose the probleme better? > > I have the following hard/software configuration: > > Stock Debian 2.6.15-1-amd64-k8-smp kernel > - / and swap-partion on /dev/sda1 (sil 3114) > - /var on /dev/sdb1 (sil 3114) > - /home on /dev/sdc1 (3ware) > > Dual Opteron Tyan 2885 board with 2 prcs (248), 4 GB > Sil 3114 on-board SATA controler > with 1 WDC WD2000JD-00H and 1 SAMSUNG SP2504C, no raid > 3Ware 9500S-8 RAID5 with 5 WDC WD1200SD disks
Sorry for the late reaction. We have a similar board and found that a Promise TX4 has a higher throughput. DOn't know about the problems with sound stuttering or so cause this is a server without sound configured. FYI, lspci says: "Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20718 (SATA 300 TX4)". Another thing to try is to use a different IO scheduler. To see the available and used IO schedulers, use: cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler To select a different one (cfq, for example), use: echo cfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler This can also be selected at boot time using the "elevator=" parameter (see Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt for more information). The default is anticipatory, but in my experience cfq distributes IO more equal to processes, especially when used in combination with ionice (see Documentation/block/ioprio.txt for code). Erik -- +-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 -- | Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
