Slow disks under linux
I'm trying to duplicate an FS from an oldish 5,400rpm 6GB IDE drive to a new 7,200rpm 61GB IDE drive using the usual cp -ax / /mnt. But it's unbelievably slow -- vmstat 2 is reporting bi/bo around 300! Having just compared that with my main server (10K 7.2K SCSIs) that's 10x slower. The thing I noticed is that the interrupts were approaching 10K/s(!) whereas on the working box they're around 1500. CPU system is also near-pegged around 80%. Anyone know what might be going on here? (Linux 2.2.17, Debian woody. The 6GB is connected with an 80pin IDE cable -- might that do it??) Paul, who will probably end up using FreeBSD since its hardware RAID (HPT370) and video (Matrox G450 dual) is apparently better...
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 03:19:21AM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: Paul, who will probably end up using FreeBSD since its hardware RAID (HPT370) and video (Matrox G450 dual) is apparently better... vinum in mirror mode is not supposed to be that good (apparently it does no integrity checking of the mirror). However, I am not an authoritative source on this. MBM
Re: Slow disks under linux
Paul Makepeace [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm trying to duplicate an FS from an oldish 5,400rpm 6GB IDE drive to a new 7,200rpm 61GB IDE drive using the usual cp -ax / /mnt. But it's unbelievably slow -- vmstat 2 is reporting bi/bo around 300! What does hdparm have to say? -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 11:27:07AM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 03:19:21AM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: Paul, who will probably end up using FreeBSD since its hardware RAID (HPT370) and video (Matrox G450 dual) is apparently better... vinum in mirror mode is not supposed to be that good (apparently it does no integrity checking of the mirror). However, I am not an authoritative source on this. You don't have to use vinum with hardware raid. I almost fell for that, too. ;-) OTOH, one other thing to be aware of with vinum (the software RAID bit of FreeBSD) is that it doesn't support the root partition yet. AFAIK. -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 11:19:28AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: What does hdparm have to say? Ah yes, thanks, I remember that from 1997, the last time I used it :-) I switched DMA on both drives (hdparm -d1), and interrupts went down, transfer rate went up and all was good. Now, why do I have to do that? dmesg reports: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xc000-0xc007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio ide1: BM-DMA at 0xc008-0xc00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio i.e. both DMA, so why does hdparm -d say using_dma off (and the system generally crawl)? Paul -- How would you have done it?
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, 31 May 2001, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Paul Makepeace [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm trying to duplicate an FS from an oldish 5,400rpm 6GB IDE drive to a new 7,200rpm 61GB IDE drive using the usual cp -ax / /mnt. But it's unbelievably slow -- vmstat 2 is reporting bi/bo around 300! What does hdparm have to say? good point ... many/most linux distros come with all the bells and whistles for quick HD access turned to 'off' .. I tripled the transfer rate on my slaptop by turning DMA and other stuff on ... and it didn;t explode like the manpage said it might. another tip is to mount the two IDE devices on seperate controllers .. seems to improve things sometimes. -- Robin Szemeti Redpoint Consulting Limited Real Solutions For A Virtual World
Re: Slow disks under linux
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: another tip is to mount the two IDE devices on seperate controllers .. seems to improve things sometimes. Oh Lord, yes. More busses than London General. No, really. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 02:32:58PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: whistles for quick HD access turned to 'off' .. I tripled the transfer rate on my slaptop by turning DMA and other stuff on ... and it didn;t explode like the manpage said it might. I caved and upgraded to 2.4.5, something I dislike doing with Debian. 2.4.x has better gfx card AGP support. Anyway, there is an option CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y and CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y which *still* don't have udma switched on with the drives. Oh well. Is there an agreed-upon place to perform the hdparm shenanigans during boot? I would imagine early on... OK, getting more esoteric now -- is anyone running dual monitors? I finally got my G450 running with KDE2 but the window manager doesn't add decoration to the windows on the 2ndary monitor, i.e. I can't move windows and they don't get mouse focus. Paul -- Slow preparation, fast execution
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:12:30AM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: OK, getting more esoteric now -- is anyone running dual monitors? I finally got my G450 running with KDE2 but the window manager doesn't add decoration to the windows on the 2ndary monitor, i.e. I can't move windows and they don't get mouse focus. You might need to run a 2nd copy of kwin, like this: % kwin -- display :0.1 Try that and see if it works... -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, 31 May 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
OK, getting more esoteric now -- is anyone running dual monitors? I
finally got my G450 running with KDE2 but the window manager doesn't add
decoration to the windows on the 2ndary monitor, i.e. I can't move
windows and they don't get mouse focus.
Are you using xinerama (i.e. so your monitors are spliced together into
one display?) E (still 0.15.5...) runs fine with this[1] on my G400 and
XFree86 4.0 (with dem beta drivers)
Later.
Mark.
[1] Actually sometimes it moves a windows I'm resizing on my secondary
monitor onto my first, but that's only once in a very blue moon.
--
s'' Mark Fowler London.pm Bath.pm
http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
';use Term'Cap;$t=Tgetent Term'Cap{};print$t-Tputs(cl);for$w(split/ +/
){for(0..30){$|=print$t-Tgoto(cm,$_,$y). $w;select$k,$k,$k,.03}$y+=2}
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:26:14PM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: You might need to run a 2nd copy of kwin, like this: % kwin -- display :0.1 (--display) Try that and see if it works... Yes! Thanks. Now to get it to start like that on its own... It's very weird re-learning X after nearly a decade since I last properly used it. KDE2's Konqueror browser is really, really impressive. Wow! Seems quicker and less crashy than Mozilla. Now if only it played Flash and Quicktime movies... Paul -- From nothing to more than nothing
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:41:11PM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: Are you using xinerama (i.e. so your monitors are spliced together into one display?) No, it's KDE2 which seems to split them into separate desktops. The mouse moves between them as though they're one but I can't drag windows back forth (no loss, really). The Matrox Windows drivers are much better -- graphical arbitrary relative positioning of the 2nd monitor. E (still 0.15.5...) Talking of E check out these bus modes: # hdparm -i /dev/hda | tail -1 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 # Paul
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:42:50AM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:26:14PM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: You might need to run a 2nd copy of kwin, like this: % kwin -- display :0.1 (--display) Sorry, saw that after I posted... Why don't spell checkers understand Unix? :-) Try that and see if it works... Yes! Thanks. Now to get it to start like that on its own... It's very weird re-learning X after nearly a decade since I last properly used it. KDE2's Konqueror browser is really, really impressive. Wow! Seems quicker and less crashy than Mozilla. Now if only it played Flash and Quicktime movies... Konqueror should be able to use any standard netscape plugins, such as the flash plugin. You're probably out of luck with the quicktime movies though. I'd like to tell you how to get the flash plugin working, but I couldn't because it's a Linux .so and can't be linked in to my FreeBSD konqueror. :-( -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:47:28AM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:41:11PM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: Are you using xinerama (i.e. so your monitors are spliced together into one display?) No, it's KDE2 which seems to split them into separate desktops. The mouse moves between them as though they're one but I can't drag windows back forth (no loss, really). The Matrox Windows drivers are much better -- graphical arbitrary relative positioning of the 2nd monitor. The monitor layout should be controllable from the XF86Config file. Somehow. I haven't tried this though. RTFM. -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Slow disks under linux
Dominic Mitchell wrote: I'd like to tell you how to get the flash plugin working, but I couldn't because it's a Linux .so and can't be linked in to my FreeBSD konqueror. :-( There's an OpenSource version written by Olivier Debon. It's not as good as the official one but it's better than a kick in the tits with a wet haddock. http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/ -- simon wistowwireless systems coder i think, i said i think this is our fault.
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:55:12PM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote: The monitor layout should be controllable from the XF86Config file. Somehow. I haven't tried this though. RTFM. I have, Section ServerLayout Identifier Default Layout Screen Primary Screen Secondary LeftOf Primary InputDevice Generic Keyboard InputDevice Configured Mouse EndSection What I really meant was Windows allows me to point-and-drool the 2ndary monitor around and change the res and position on the fly rather than having to restart X. Its cute graphic also shows the relative monitor sizes -- which is actually depressing because it illustrates just how much bigger better the $1600 21 monitor (2048x1536, and usable) is over a $400 21 (1280x1024, struggling to manage 80Hz) :-/ Paul
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, 31 May 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
I have,
Section ServerLayout Identifier Default Layout Screen Primary
Screen Secondary LeftOf Primary InputDevice Generic Keyboard
InputDevice Configured Mouse EndSection
Look, look, bad Text::Autoformat setup. I suck. Anyway..
And I have
Section ServerLayout
Identifier another layout
Screen Primary
Screen Secondary RightOf Primary
InputDevice Mouse1 CorePointer
InputDevice Keyboard1 CoreKeyboard
EndSection
You really only have to change LeftOf and RightOf to switch the monitors
around (which I did last time I moved desk as I went from having one
monitor to the left of the primary console monitor to having one monitor
to the right.)
You can't do that in Windows. Ha.
--
s'' Mark Fowler London.pm Bath.pm
http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
';use Term'Cap;$t=Tgetent Term'Cap{};print$t-Tputs(cl);for$w(split/ +/
){for(0..30){$|=print$t-Tgoto(cm,$_,$y). $w;select$k,$k,$k,.03}$y+=2}
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 05:41:45PM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: On Thu, 31 May 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote: Section ServerLayout Identifier Default Layout Screen Primary Screen Secondary LeftOf Primary InputDevice Generic Keyboard InputDevice Configured Mouse EndSection Look, look, bad Text::Autoformat setup. I suck. Anyway.. Wait 'til you have 'X' at the end of a sentence! Or e.g. or something. It gets Microsoftly clever. And I have Section ServerLayout Identifier another layout Screen Primary Screen Secondary RightOf Primary InputDevice Mouse1 CorePointer InputDevice Keyboard1 CoreKeyboard EndSection You really only have to change LeftOf and RightOf to switch the monitors around (which I did last time I moved desk as I went from having one monitor to the left of the primary console monitor to having one monitor to the right.) You can't do that in Windows. Ha. Can too! You can have the 2nd one in any orientation at all to the 1st, 1400 pixels to the left, 1000 above, with a 1024x768 screen. *And* you can do all this without restarting your window manager.. Not that I like Windows or anything :) Paul
Re: Slow disks under linux
On 31/05/2001 at 17:41 +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: You really only have to change LeftOf and RightOf to switch the monitors around (which I did last time I moved desk as I went from having one monitor to the left of the primary console monitor to having one monitor to the right.) You can't do that in Windows. Ha. Are you sure? Anyway, you've been able to do multiple monitors in Mac OS since 6 point something tiny. With as many monitors as you can get cards for (theoretically, I think there are ways of doing about 20.) And all with an idiotproof pointy clicky interface. Ha ha. And it copes when you make a laptop go from dual-head back to running on the internal screen- all the windows just move back. (Under OS 9, anyway.) Aha ha ha! Sorry. I'll drink some more Unix kool aid in a minute. -- :: paul :: stay all day :: if you want to
Re: Slow disks under linux
On Thu, 31 May 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 04:41:11PM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: Are you using xinerama (i.e. so your monitors are spliced together into one display?) No, it's KDE2 which seems to split them into separate desktops. The mouse moves between them as though they're one but I can't drag windows back forth (no loss, really). The Matrox Windows drivers are much better -- graphical arbitrary relative positioning of the 2nd monitor. I'm still waiting for someone to finally get support for my ATI Mobilty r128 sorted out still cant have the 2nd monitor or tvout stuff working under Linux .. does under windoze though ... and ATI reckon to provide oodles of assistance to the Linux community so it should happen soon i hope. -- Robin Szemeti Redpoint Consulting Limited Real Solutions For A Virtual World
Re: Slow disks under linux
KDE2's Konqueror browser is really, really impressive. Wow! Seems quicker and less crashy than Mozilla. Now if only it played Flash and Quicktime movies... Mine does flash...
