slow behaviour

cs-cam · 03-23-2005, 05:07 PM

I recently reformatted, just for kicks. Before that I could be doing anything and the computer would still run fine, extracting archives, compiling a couple of programs at once and it was all the same, you'd never know it. Now, extract anything over 10MB, copy a decent sized file and the mouse pointer gets all jerky, sound stops and farts around, it's crap. This shouldn't be happening, I'm running fluxbox 0.9.12 on a P4 3.2GHz with 1.5GB RAM.

Any ideas what could be causing this? I'm using the nvidia drivers, not nv which have traditionally run like shit for me. Any help would be very much appreciated as this is driving me insane

visaris · 03-23-2005, 06:10 PM

It sounds to me like DMA might be turned off on your drive. Type:

Code:

hdparm -d /dev/your_drive_here

to see if DMA is enabled.

example:

Code:

box # hdparm -d /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
box #

xowl · 03-23-2005, 06:19 PM

Do U have HT??

It is enabled??

cs-cam · 03-24-2005, 05:02 PM

I do have HT and it's all setup right in the kernel I'm 99.9% sure. Had a play under the SMP section and it all looked good.

visaris: DMA is not enabled, problem found

How would I go about turning it on? I checked Google and tried hdparm -d1 /dev/hda but got this error

Code:

[root@sylvester ~]# hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

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

Should I be doing this at boot or something else?

Ta

cs-cam · 03-24-2005, 05:30 PM

Never mind, I recompiledmy kernel enabled some drivers that I didn't before and it's working fine now. Thanks heaps