System slowness with high harddisk load

[Aries-Belgium]

I have a really annoying problem: whenever I have a high harddisk load (copying files, compiling, ...) my system becames slow and sometimes it's even irresponsive. :s

This is my hardware:
AMD64 X2 4400
MSI K8N Neo4 FI
2x 80GB SATA
1x 250GB SATA II

These are my harddisk reading times:

Code: Select all

# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   3232 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1616.23 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.01 seconds =  58.52 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads:   3376 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1687.93 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.02 seconds =  58.27 MB/sec

/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:   3520 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1761.63 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.03 seconds =  58.06 MB/sec

All partitions are in ext3, but I don't think the fs has got anything to with because before I had reiserfs on the same system and I had the same problem.

What could be the problem?

[Gergan Penkov]

Have you tried different kernels, for me (although it is very strange) ck-based patchsets tend to give such hiccup impression on high-load, where the gentoo-sources generally not that fast tend to have always stable performance. Compiling, copying and so on do not have serious impact on the GUI.

[Aries-Belgium]

Have you tried different kernels, for me (although it is very strange) ck-based patchsets tend to give such hiccup impression on high-load, where the gentoo-sources generally not that fast tend to have always stable performance. Compiling, copying and so on do not have serious impact on the GUI.

Before I was using vanilla-sources and now I'm using gentoo-sources, both have the same problem. I will try the ck-sources, because this is a really annoying problem

Thx for you tip. I will let you know if it helped

[vovin]

try CFQ scheduler

[Aries-Belgium]

Okay, I did both
Although I have a question about the I/O sheduler: when set the default i/o sheduler in my kernel config, do I also need to put it in my grub config?

My cached reads seem to be higher, but my device reads are lower:

Code: Select all

# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   3692 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1846.79 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  174 MB in  3.01 seconds =  57.84 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads:   3652 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1827.45 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  174 MB in  3.00 seconds =  57.97 MB/sec

/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:   3680 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1840.98 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.01 seconds =  58.50 MB/sec

I will try to compile a package, where I had problems with before, tomorrow.

[Bornio]

try CFQ scheduler

Please try DeadLine as I suggested here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-48 ... rt-75.html
This helped the issue, for me at least, A LOT.

If it does for you too, please mark this thread as SOLVED.

Alex.