[SOLVED] Disk activity slows the system to a crawl?

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hexidecimate · Post by **hexidecimate** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 4:22 pm

Sorry, I hate making my first post to these forums a question, but this is annoying as hell and I'm stumped where to even begin fixing this one...

I got a Dell Latitude D610 with the system specs maxed out (2Gb ram, etc.) Got a new HD, installed Gentoo to it for the first time, and I have had no problems whatsoever. However, when I do any copying to/from discs the system slows to a crawl. The mouse will hardly move. It takes forever for the OS to recgonize when I'm typing on the keyboard and when it does it will drop some letters and repeat others liiiike ttttis. The mouse is jumpy at best to the point of being almost unusable. My CPU speed jumps to 100% and any program I run is extremely unresponsive. Essentially, it feels like I'm using the system while I got an emerge nice -n -20'd. This happens both in KDE and in bash, so I seriously doubt it's something with my X or KDE.

This happens on all writes to all disks. Copying a movie from one directory to another on my HD, reading/writing to my thumb drive, writing a CD, everything. The works. And on top of that disk reads seem a bit slower than they should. I'm figuring that whatever is wrong is affecting disk read speed also.

The hardware is fine, it works perfectly under WinXP, Win7, Kubuntu, and Knoppix. So far I'm still setting my system up so all I really got emerged is base + KDE3.5. Does anyone have an idea what this could be? I'm tired of having a totally unusable computer everytime I copy anything... :(

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 4:31 pm

hexidecimate,

Welcome to Gentoo. Most newcomers start with a question, some stay for years.

I suspect you do not have DMA enabled for your hard drive and/or you don't have premption set properly in the kernel, or maybe both.

What does

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hdparm /dev/....

say about your drive ?
If your drive is /dev/sd... then DMA is required by the SCSI specification and will be on.

To help check your kernel in more depth, we will need to see the output of lspci.

Accessing USB connected storage devices is CPU intensive as USB does not support DMA, so the CPU has to move very byte.

hexidecimate · Post by **hexidecimate** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 4:57 pm

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hex@Hexi ~ $ sudo hdparm /dev/hda3

/dev/hda3:
 multcount     = 16 (on)
 IO_support    =  0 (default)
 unmaskirq     =  0 (off)
 using_dma     =  0 (off)
 keepsettings  =  0 (off)
 readonly      =  0 (off)
 readahead     = 256 (on)
 geometry      = 30401/255/63, sectors = 445386060, start = 4433940
hex@Hexi ~ $ lspci
bash: lspci: command not found
hex@Hexi ~ $ sudo lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 01)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI6515 Cardbus Controller
03:01.5 Communication controller: Texas Instruments PCI6515 SmartCard Controller
03:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection (rev 05)
hex@Hexi ~ $

Yeah, I was wondering about DMA but knowing how to set that up is a little bit above my skill level at the moment. It seems it's turned off.

USB? It was doing it last night while I was at a friend's house, running on battery with nothing plugged in.

Welcome to Gentoo. Most newcomers start with a question, some stay for years.

Heh, I've been lurking/searching for years but have always refused to post a "please help me!" thread. I'm just not much of a talker. :P

(Edit) After a quick display of my 1337 google-fu...

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hex@Hexi ~ $ sudo hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
Password:

/dev/hda:
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 using_dma     =  0 (off)

Does the same when I quit X and log in under root... :/

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hex@Hexi ~ $ sudo hdparm -i /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

 Model=WDC WD2500BEVE-00WZT0, FwRev=01.01A01, SerialNo=WD-WXCY08J62386
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=488397168
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode

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hex@Hexi ~ $ sudo cat /proc/ide/hda/settings
name                    value           min             max             mode
----                    -----           ---             ---             ----
acoustic                0               0               254             rw
address                 1               0               2               rw
bios_cyl                30401           0               65535           rw
bios_head               255             0               255             rw
bios_sect               63              0               63              rw
current_speed           0               0               70              rw
failures                0               0               65535           rw
init_speed              0               0               70              rw
io_32bit                0               0               3               rw
keepsettings            0               0               1               rw
lun                     0               0               7               rw
max_failures            1               0               65535           rw
multcount               16              0               16              rw
nice1                   1               0               1               rw
nowerr                  0               0               1               rw
number                  0               0               3               rw
pio_mode                write-only      0               255             w
unmaskirq               0               0               1               rw
using_dma               0               0               1               rw
wcache                  1               0               1               rw

(Edit 2) More googling, found out that I might not have it enabled in the kernel. If so then I'll have to muck with it tonight when I'm not at work. I'm sure I am using the right IDE driver and not the generic one:

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00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 80 [Master])
        Subsystem: Dell Device 0182
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
        I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1]
        I/O ports at 0170 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 0374 [size=1]
        I/O ports at bfa0 [size=16]
        Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 2
        Kernel modules: ahci, ata_piix

jsn · Post by **jsn** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:45 pm

Hi,

Your problem sounds very similar to one in: AMD64 system slow/unresponsive during disk access thread. Even the D610 is not 64bit (or is it?

) you could check it out. Also its still unsolved mystery. Maybe totally different case from your problem, but similar symptoms.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:05 pm

hexidecimate,

You need to read this post then just do it.

While you are poking about in the kernel, make sure you have preemption set to low latency desktop.

bunder · Post by **bunder** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 2:08 am

and as a side note... SATA drives don't use DMA.

edit: well... they do and they don't... you can't turn it on or off. what neddy said.

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# hdparm -d 1 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

------
# hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

 Model=HDS722580VLSA80                         , FwRev=V32OA60A, SerialNo=      VNRB3EC2D7AP4L
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=7938kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?16?
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=160836480
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a:  ATA/ATAPI-2,3,4,5,6

 * signifies the current active mode

hexidecimate · Post by **hexidecimate** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 2:14 am

AWESOME! Neddy, I owe you a beer. Really. After testing it by emerging Open Office, copying from a CD, copying from a thumbdrive, and downloading a torrent at the same time I think it works perfectly. Thanks. :)

To anyone who thinks this is the solution to their problem - do note that you're going to have to edit your lilo.conf and fstab files to match your hard drive changing from being on /dev/hda* to being on /dev/sda*. To make this work you're going to have to edit your fstab before you reboot. Then when you get to lilo (don't know grub, sorry) type the selection you want to boot to followed by "--root=/dev/<your root partition here>", e.g. -

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2.6.27-gentoo-r10 --root=/dev/sda3

Finally, edit your lilo.conf and run lilo. That should be it, this was about the only thing I had to work around.

Thanks, and good luck to anyone having the same problem. :)