network speed

Phoebe · 03-06-2008, 05:49 PM

Not sure if this is a sound question. I have a dual boot system, and when I am running linux, somehow the internet speed becomes very very slow. It's not as obvious when all I do is browsing the webpages. I have an internet printer setup, it usually would take up to 5 minutes to get some 30 pages printed, while in XP it will take less than 1 minute. Is it because of the internet settings or is it just normal?

Also yesterday I was trying to transfer some files through msn (login by giam), a 300K file took more than 4 minutes to transfer, this never happened in XP before.

So in summary it's like suddenly everything over the internet slows down in linux system. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks!

dkm999 · 03-07-2008, 11:20 AM

There are lots of possibilities here, but it seems to me that the best place to start looking is at the interface to your network. Please post some details of your connection: is it an Ethernet interface, and does this computer then connect to a local network (or Ethernet Switch), or does it connect directly to a DSL or cable modem and then straight out onto the Internet?

You can also get some data that would be useful in debugging this problem by examining the error statistics that are kept by the system. I will assume that your computer has only 1 interface, and that it is an Ethernet board for this example; if these assumptions are not true, you will have to adjust the command.

Code:

 #ifconfig eth0

This will display a batch of statistics. Of particular interest are the MTU and the lines showing the errors: dropped packets, overruns, and framing errors, and the line showing the number of collisions.

On my systems, which have been running cleanly for weeks, these numbers are all either zero or in single digits. If any of them is large (>50), it will offer a clue to what is happening.

A second line of inquiry is to find out what kind of network interface your Linux system believes you have, and to compare that with the device actually installed. To collect info about this, you can either examine the boot log (its location varies depending on which distro you have), looking for the lines having to do with the network interface hardware, or use the command

Code:

#lspci

to get a report on what the network device identifier is, and

Code:

#ethtool -i eth0

to get the driver name and version info.

Then, boot your XP system, and get the same info from Control Panel\System\Hardware\Device Manager\Network Hardware. Double-click on the network adapter, and then select the Driver tab and then Driver Details. This will tell you what XP thinks the hardware is, and what driver it is using.

The reason for this second batch of data is that your slow network operation may be the result of a driver that does not match up with your hardware. Such mismatches can easily cause the problems you are seeing. Let us know the results, and maybe a solution will present itself.

Hewson · 03-07-2008, 11:21 AM

Hi Phoebe,

its very hard to debug your networking issue (or issues). It would be better to cut down your problems into smaller managable problems.

If you do not notice issues with browsing pages, perhaps the software for network printer is not working or configured properly.

If gaim is not working how you expect, perhaps gaim is the issue.

With out more concrete information we can not procede with helping you.

My 1st two guess would be either:

1. its routing related
2. its DNS related

Phoebe · 03-08-2008, 12:03 PM

Thanks very much for the reply. Apart from getting free great softwares, the timely response from all you experienced users is really an extra plus to switch to linux.

I am running rhel5. I started to check my internet connection settings. Here's what I get:

Code:

#ifconfig
 bash: ifconfig: command not found
#lspci
 bash: lspci: command not found
#ethtool -i eth0
 driver: tg3
 version: 3.80-rh
 firmware-version: 5754-v3.15
 bus-info: 0000:03:00.0

So I checked my root PATH

Code:

# echo $PATH
/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/username/bin:

These are part of my /etc/profile, since I don't quite understand what pathmunge is doing, I don't know how to change it so that /sbin can be included

Code:

# /etc/profile

# System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc

pathmunge () {
        if ! echo $PATH | /bin/egrep -q "(^|:)$1($|:)" ; then
           if [ "$2" = "after" ] ; then
              PATH=$PATH:$1
           else
              PATH=$1:$PATH
           fi
        fi
}

# ksh workaround
if [ -z "$EUID" -a -x /usr/bin/id ]; then
        EUID=`id -u`
        UID=`id -ru`
fi

# Path manipulation
if [ "$EUID" = "0" ]; then
        pathmunge /sbin
        pathmunge /usr/sbin
        pathmunge /usr/local/sbin
fi

Hewson · 03-08-2008, 01:48 PM

instead of ifconfig try /sbin/ifconfig
instead of lspci try /sbin/lspci

you are on the right track that your path isnt correct, so just use the full path to the command, instead of the command by itself.

are you using "su" to change to root? If so use "su -" to make sure you get your system variables set right.

pathmunge() adds the directories to the path if your userid is 0 (which is the userid of root)

Also add one more thing to the list:

Code:

 netstat -r

(if the command doesn't work by itself also make it /sbin/netstat , i forget where netstat resides)

Phoebe · 03-08-2008, 03:48 PM

Here are the results:

Code:

# /sbin/ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:B9:43:9B:02  
          inet addr:141.212.134.77  Bcast:141.212.135.255  Mask:255.255.254.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:b9ff:fe43:9b02/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:795709 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:308341 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:491642787 (468.8 MiB)  TX bytes:44136748 (42.0 MiB)
          Interrupt:169 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:2097 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2097 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:4693641 (4.4 MiB)  TX bytes:4693641 (4.4 MiB)

# /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Contoller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300 Pro] (Secondary)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5754 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

# netstat -r
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
141.212.134.0   *               255.255.254.0   U         0 0          0 eth0
169.254.0.0     *               255.255.0.0     U         0 0          0 eth0
default         141.212.134.1   0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 eth0

so does any of these look wrong?

A side note: how do I add the /sbin into my root PATH, so I can just use ifconfig, etc? Thanks a lot!

Hewson · 03-09-2008, 04:41 PM

As far your network speed problem: Not sure what your problem is, quite yet, what does resolv.conf look like?

Code:

cat /etc/resolv.conf

For your path problem:
How are you becoming root? Are you logging in as root or using 'su'?
What distribution of linux are you using? (red hat, debian, etc.)

dkm999 · 03-09-2008, 06:09 PM

Sorry I've been out of touch this weekend. Fortunately, Hewson has filled in while I've been gone.

So let's review what we know:

1. It appears that you are running with the Broadcom-distributed driver for the Ethernet chipset that is in your computer. That eliminates one possible problem.

2. The number of receive and transmit errors seen on this interface is 0 of all kinds. This very likely means that you are running your machine on a dedicated DSL or Cable Modem liink, or else have a router of some sort between you and the Internet. (Otherwise, you should see some low level of errors there.)

3. Your routing table appears correct for a single machine connected directly to an ISP. (This probably eliminates the router-in-the-middle conjecture above).

4. You are running RHEL5, which is a pretty recent distribution based on a 2.6 kernel; I think this comes with a year of web-based support included in the price. Have you tried to talk to the Red Hat folks about this problem, and were they unable to resolve it for you?

5. The slowness appears to be most noticeable when you transfer large files either to your printer or to some other system; this would argue against any DNS problems, which should show up as a long initial delay when you start a new connection; after that, (since your computer knows the IP address of its partner, DNS is not involved).

This list pretty much eliminates the usual suspects, so we are down to lower-likelihood guesses. Have you examined your boot log (I think it will be in /var/log/dmesg for any complaints there about the Broadcom Ethernet interface on boot-up? And while you are in the neighborhood, have a look at /var/log/messages, which is where many parts of the Linux system post complaints about things that seem wrong. If that file is huge, and getting longer when you try to do a long transfer, there may be some clues buried in it.

Finally, if you can, let us know if this problem occurs without regard to the destination, or if it only occurs when you try to communicate with certain sites. I know that this can be a difficult call, but if you have noticed anything in this direction, it may help narrow things down.

PS: None of us ever answered your initial question explicitly: this is NOT normal, and we should find out why you are seeing this behavior.

PPS: The easiest way to insert /sbin into your PATH variable for a one-time use is

Code:

# set PATH=/sbin:$PATH

Unfortunately, this does not last; to make the change permanent, you need to put something similar into your .bashrc command file. It is safe to put this in unconditionally; if you try to execute some program that requires root access without becoming root, your machine will just comment rudely

Code:

must be superuser

. And some of the functions, like reading the statistics with ifconfig, do not require you to be root.

Phoebe · 03-10-2008, 08:22 AM

Thanks for the long detailed reply!

Quote:

4. You are running RHEL5, which is a pretty recent distribution based on a 2.6 kernel; I think this comes with a year of web-based support included in the price. Have you tried to talk to the Red Hat folks about this problem, and were they unable to resolve it for you?

This is part of a university supplied software, and I don't get to deal with rhn directly.

Quote:

This list pretty much eliminates the usual suspects, so we are down to lower-likelihood guesses. Have you examined your boot log (I think it will be in /var/log/dmesg for any complaints there about the Broadcom Ethernet interface on boot-up? And while you are in the neighborhood, have a look at /var/log/messages, which is where many parts of the Linux system post complaints about things that seem wrong. If that file is huge, and getting longer when you try to do a long transfer, there may be some clues buried in it.

There are too many lines in /var/log/dmesg, so I tried to grep by "err", but I don't really understand the results.

Code:

# cat dmesg |grep "err*"
Linux version 2.6.18-53.1.14.el5 (brewbuilder@hs20-bc2-3.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.1.2 20070626 (Red Hat 4.1.2-14)) #1 SMP Tue Feb 19 07:18:46 EST 2008
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000bfe03c00 - 00000000bfe53c00 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000bfe55c00 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000f0000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed20000 - 00000000feda0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fef00000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000ffb00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
Memory for crash kernel (0x0 to 0x0) notwithin permissible range
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x808
Processor #0 6:15 APIC version 20
Processor #1 6:15 APIC version 20
IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 8, version 32, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23
ACPI: IRQ0 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ2 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 32768 bytes)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 524288 (order: 10, 4194304 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes)
Checking aperture...
PCI-DMA: Using software bounce buffering for IO (SWIOTLB)
Memory: 3974492k/5177344k available (2439k kernel code, 151836k reserved, 1234k data, 192k init)
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 4791.22 BogoMIPS (lpj=2395612)
SELinux:  Starting in permissive mode
selinux_register_security:  Registering secondary module capability
CPU0: Thermal monitoring enabled (TM2)
SMP alternatives: switching to UP code
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
Detected 16.625 MHz APIC timer.
SMP alternatives: switching to SMP code
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 4787.93 BogoMIPS (lpj=2393966)
CPU1: Thermal monitoring enabled (TM2)
time.c: Using 14.318180 MHz WALL HPET GTOD HPET/TSC timer.
sizeof(buffer_head)=96 bytes
NET: Registered protocol family 16
ACPI: \_SB_.PCI0.IDE1.PRI1.MAS1: Adding notify handler
ACPI: bus type pci registered
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCI4._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCI2._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCI1._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCI5._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 12 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 *10 11 12 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs *3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 15) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *9 10 11 12 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 15) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *9 10 11 12 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 3 4 *5 6 7 9 10 11 12 15)
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
hpet0: 3 64-bit timers, 14318180 Hz
pnp: 00:01: ioport range 0x800-0x85f could not be reserved
pnp: 00:01: ioport range 0xc00-0xc7f has been reserved
pnp: 00:01: ioport range 0x860-0x8ff could not be reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x100-0x1fe has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x200-0x277 has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x280-0x2e7 has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x2f0-0x2f7 has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x300-0x377 has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x380-0x3bb has been reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x3c0-0x3e7 could not be reserved
pnp: 00:09: ioport range 0x3f6-0x3f7 has been reserved
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:01.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:01.0 to 64
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1c.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1c.0 to 64
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1c.4[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1c.4 to 64
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1e.0 to 64
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 262144 (order: 10, 4194304 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP reno registered
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 512 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
SELinux:  Registering netfilter hooks
- User ID: Red Hat, Inc. (Kernel Module GPG key)
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered (default)
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:01.0 to 64
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:01.0:pcie00]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:01.0:pcie03]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1c.0 to 64
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.0:pcie00]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.0:pcie02]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.0:pcie03]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1c.4 to 64
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.4:pcie00]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.4:pcie02]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:1c.4:pcie03]
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12ac
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 4096 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Probing IDE interface ide0...
Probing IDE interface ide1...
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: bitmap version 4.39
TCP bic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Freeing unused kernel memory: 192k freed
Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 469k
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v3.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1a.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1a.0 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1a.1[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 209
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1a.1 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 217
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.0 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.1[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 209
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.1 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.2[C] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 225
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.2 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
ohci_hcd: 2005 April 22 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1a.7[C] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 233
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1a.7 to 64
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: EHCI Host Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 6
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 217
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.7 to 64
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 7
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
libata version 2.21 loaded.
ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[C] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 50
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[C] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 50
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.5 to 64
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
security:  3 users, 6 roles, 1660 types, 210 bools, 1 sens, 1024 cats
SELinux:  Setting up existing superblocks.
input: PC Speaker as /class/input/input3
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:03:00.0 to 64
eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95754) rev b002 PHY(5787)] (PCI Express) 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet 00:19:b9:43:9b:02
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
scsi 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 4:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
sd 4:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
sd 4:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.3[C] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 50
usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for Handspring Visor / Palm OS
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for Sony Clie 3.5
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for Sony Clie 5.0
visor 4-1:1.0: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter detected
usb 4-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
usb 4-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
usbcore: registered new driver visor
drivers/usb/serial/visor.c: USB HandSpring Visor / Palm OS driver
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1b.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1b.0 to 64
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
NET: Registered protocol family 10
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
ACPI: Power Button (CM) [VBTN]
device-mapper: ioctl: 4.11.0-ioctl (2006-09-14) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
device-mapper: multipath: version 1.0.5 loaded
EXT3 FS on sda6, internal journal
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on sda5, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

Most of the messages in /var/log/messages look fine, the only error message is this one, which is an issue related with flashplayer (I've posted a separate msg about this, but haven't fixed it yet.)

Code:

Mar  9 16:51:06 kernel: swfdec-mozilla-[15583]: segfault at 000000000000000c rip 0000003cc9e1e640 rsp 00000000409ffc58 error 6

Quote:

Finally, if you can, let us know if this problem occurs without regard to the destination, or if it only occurs when you try to communicate with certain sites. I know that this can be a difficult call, but if you have noticed anything in this direction, it may help narrow things down.

The printer sits right in the same office of my computer, only that it is shared by the whole office. So even not considering the file transfering issues, I'd really like to address the printing problem first. Do you think the slow printing is related with spooling?

Quote:

PS: None of us ever answered your initial question explicitly: this is NOT normal, and we should find out why you are seeing this behavior.

This is good to know:P

Quote:

PPS: The easiest way to insert /sbin into your PATH variable for a one-time use is

Code:

# set PATH=/sbin:$PATH

Unfortunately, this does not last; to make the change permanent, you need to put something similar into your .bashrc command file. It is safe to put this in unconditionally; if you try to execute some program that requires root access without becoming root, your machine will just comment rudely

Code:

must be superuser

. And some of the functions, like reading the statistics with ifconfig, do not require you to be root.

After Hewson's post, I tried to switch to root by su - instead of su, and then I got everything working. But ifconfig is still not available to a normal user, I think I need to add /sbin to my user's .bashrc.

dkm999 · 03-10-2008, 11:28 PM

It appears that you grep'ed "er*", not "err*". In any case, what would be more informative is to search down through /var/log/dmesg for the first occurrence of [b]NET:[/b[], and then post the next hundred lines or so. Unfortunately, this logfile is pretty daunting unless you have seen several of them, because all the independent threads that are active at boot time just post stuff willy-nilly via the syslog service. Therefore, the interesting stuff will be interleaved with completely unrelated messages having to do with the initializaion of other parts of the system.

Printing is just a special case of file transfer, as far as the originating machine is concerned; you have already eliminated a bunch of dead-ends by noting that both printing and file transfer are slow. I am pretty sure that when we find and fix the problem that is causing one of these to be slow, the other one will automagically get better, too.

In reviewing the thread, I note that we never actually determined that XP also thinks that you have a Broadcom BCM 5754 Ethernet. Can you check this, just to completely eliminate the "wrong driver" scenario?

PS: You are correct about needing to put /sbin in the unprivileged user's .bashrc. Without that, your command shell will never be able to find ifconfig or any of the other utilities in /sbin.

Phoebe · 03-11-2008, 12:14 AM

Here's the result about NET: in /var/log/dmesg

Code:

cat /var/log/dmesg |grep "NET:"
NET: Registered protocol family 16
NET: Registered protocol family 2
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
NET: Registered protocol family 10

Again, all foreign language to me

About the Broadcom BCM 5754 Ethernet, yes, I did check XP, it matches in both system.

dkm999 · 03-12-2008, 12:33 AM

It took a few searches, but I found the listing of the protocol families. The translation is:
1: Unix sockets (local)
2: IP (v4)
10: IPv6
16: User-space NETLINK sockets
17: User-space packet access

These last two are a bit of a puzzle. I am not sure why they are in use, but they might indicate that there is some daemon running on your system that is inspecting packets as they fly by. This could cause the slowth that we have been trying to chase down. I think my next step would be to look at the list of processes that is running on your server (#ps aux), and try to divine if any of them might be inspecting network traffic for some reason. Normally, this is only done by iptables, whose code is contained almost exclusively in the kernel, and so would not lead to the use of protocol families 16 and 17.

Curioser and curioser, said Alice.

dkm999 · 03-12-2008, 11:55 AM

Overnight, I thought of a completely different line of inquiry that may turn up more clues to the problem you are having. From reading the /var/log/dmesg file you posted, I have found a few crumbs indicating that you may be seeing memory starvation, and consequent swapping onto disk, which would almost certainly make things slowwwww.

To check if this is a problem for you, I recommend the following procedure:
1. Start a print job that you have found to take a long time.
2. Immediately issue the command

Code:

#vmstat 5 12

3. Post the results here.

This will give us a series of report lines for the first minute of the print job, showing what the disk activity is, and what the memory usage is. If, as I am guessing, we find that the columns si, so, and bi contain numbers much above 0, we have found an indication of the problem. In that case, it would also be instructive to know what all the running processes are on your system. You can generate such a list with the command

Code:

#ps aux

The theory behind all these guesses is that your (stock) RHEL system came configured with a bunch of daemons turned on that you actually do not need, and they are using up memory that could otherwise be put to use doing things that you actually care about. We can go over the list of running processes, and turn off the ones that seem to be useless in your situation, and that should free up enough resources to solve your problem. To guide this analysis, let us know if you are just using this machine as a workstation, or if you are actually using it as a server that other computers depend on.

We'll see whether any of this is real, or if I just had a bad dream.