Hard Drive probems

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 09:58 AM

I have some problems with my drive under my Debian (kernel 2.4.18)

Every time my drive (an ibm desktar 120Gxp 80GB) is working (like when installing a packagge, downloading a big file..) My computer slows down like hell, my mouse can't move for one or two seconds, both xmms and gqmpeg skip during a few secs....

if anyone could tell me if it's a debian bug or a bad config, I'll appreciate it

Thanks in advance

clavius · 12-01-2002, 10:52 AM

Hei,

Boy, why you don't give us some more information about your box ?
Processor type, motherboard chipset, what kind of hard drive do you have, what type of controller, and so on... Do you think we are able to read your mind ?

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 11:01 AM

Ok ok sorry about that ^^

I have a PIII-733 Processor, and lspci gives this output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C693A/694x [Apollo PRO133x] (rev 44)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598/694x [Apollo MVP3/Pro133x AGP]
00:02.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C596 ISA [Mobile South] (rev 23)
00:02.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:02.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 11)
00:02.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C596 Power Management (rev 30)
00:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)

clavius · 12-01-2002, 11:51 AM

Oh boy...

# cat /proc/meminfo

and

What kind of apps do you run on it ?

Give us COMPLETE information, pls.

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 11:59 AM

Meminfo gives me that: (I have 320MB SDRam PC133)

total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 327286784 322711552 4575232 0 13922304 215867392
Swap: 304291840 0 304291840
MemTotal: 319616 kB
MemFree: 4468 kB
MemShared: 0 kB
Buffers: 13596 kB
Cached: 210808 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 86808 kB
Inactive: 188736 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 319616 kB
LowFree: 4468 kB
SwapTotal: 297160 kB
SwapFree: 297160 kB

I run Xchat 1.8.10, Xmms 1.2.7 and Mozilla 1.0.0 under XFree86 4.2.1 with WindowMaker 0.80.0

I Don't think it can be more complete than that

clavius · 12-01-2002, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ikarius
Meminfo gives me that: (I have 320MB SDRam PC133)

total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 327286784 322711552 4575232 0 13922304 215867392
Swap: 304291840 0 304291840
MemTotal: 319616 kB
MemFree: 4468 kB

...

I run Xchat 1.8.10, Xmms 1.2.7 and Mozilla 1.0.0 under XFree86 4.2.1 with WindowMaker 0.80.0

I Don't think it can be more complete than that

Well, I'm running: XMMS, Opera, licq, KDE 3.1 (from CVS), Postgres SQL, MySQL, Apache, a socks proxy, KVirc, XFree86 4.2. and i have only 256M of ram and DOESN'T consume like it consumes to you a few apps. And KDE need A LOTTTT of memory than Window Maker.

I think that a software remain in memory and use all of processor. For this, type:
maya:~$ ps aux | more
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND

And check field 3 to see how much processor consumes every process and how much memory (field 4). Try to kill that process and see what is happening.

And btw, is there some special action when it starts to have the strange behavoir ?

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 12:47 PM

the only process that used more than 10% of CPU was mozilla, and it's listed 6 times :

ikarius 2136 14.3 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:41 0:19 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin
ikarius 2153 0.0 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:41 0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin
ikarius 2154 0.0 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:41 0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin
ikarius 2155 0.0 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:41 0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin
ikarius 2157 0.1 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:41 0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin
ikarius 2166 0.0 7.5 38452 24276 ? S 19:42 0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla/
mozilla-bin

I killed it, but even without it loaded, the same problem occurs.
The problem starts as soon as my Hard drive works, ie when copying a big file, installing a package... every time the LED stays on for more than 1 sec.

clavius · 12-01-2002, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ikarius
The problem starts as soon as my Hard drive works, ie when copying a big file, installing a package... every time the LED stays on for more than 1 sec.
[/B]

Ah... sorry, I didn't read carefully your first post. I'm not a verry good english speaker/reader and I was confused a little.

Do you have the DMA activated ?

please paste your output for: hdparm /dev/hda

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 01:11 PM

it wasn't using dma s o i changed it and now it works perfectly fine, thanks a lot

btw, is there other things I can tune with hdparm ?
the output is :

naquada:/home/ikarius# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 10011/255/63, sectors = 160836480, start = 0
busstate = 1 (on)

Thanks again

clavius · 12-01-2002, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ikarius
it wasn't using dma s o i changed it and now it works perfectly fine, thanks a lot

You have to compile your kernel and check support for your IDE chipset at block devices section (That if you want to don't add the hdparm command to your startup files)

Quote:

btw, is there other things I can tune with hdparm ?

Yes, but from my experience, with newest hardware, you can't get signifiant improvements if you change it (like transfer speed).
Check the manual.

Ikarius · 12-01-2002, 01:23 PM

ok I'll check for the kernel (I need to add other modules anyway)
thanks again