Laptop slow when reading from CD

Bebo · 08-14-2003, 05:35 AM

Hello,

Since I really don't know where to start, I apologize for this vague question. I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop, and when I'm reading (a lot of) data from CD, the computer becomes so slow that it seems on the verge of crashing. I have top'ed the machine to see what happens, but that doesn't give any immediate hints - memory and cpu load seem ok.

It hit me that it could be the read access to the harddrive that's slowing things down, and "hdparm -t /dev/hda" gives only 2.9 MB/sec(!) compared to the 37 MB/sec I have on my desktop. I have tried to set USE_DMA=1 in /etc/sysconfig/harddisks but this seems to fail. When I do it manually it says (X is an appropriate number; or nothing)

Code:

$ hdparm -d1 /dev/hdaX
/dev/hdaX:
 setting using_dma_to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Invalid argument
 using_dma    = 0 (off)

I'm using Mandrake 9.1 with a customized 2.4.21-0.25mdk kernel. Maybe I screwed up when I was configuring the new kernel, but as far I can remember it has been this slow all the time. The CD drive is a DVD and CD-RW combo-drive and the harddrive is a 60 gig Fujitsu EIDE/ATA-100 drive - whatever that means

I don't know if the lspci listing is to any help, but here it is:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 3340 (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 3341 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 24cc (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 24ca (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 Lf [Radeon Mobility 9000 M9] (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5702 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 02)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc.: Unknown device 7113 (rev 20)
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc.: Unknown device 7113 (rev 20)
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4320 (rev 02)

Lot's of unknowns here...

What's the next thing to look at?

Thank you for any help!

/Stefan

malix · 08-23-2003, 10:25 AM

hey i have the same laptop. dma is not enabled by default it seems. i use the command:

hdparm -d1 -c1 /dev/hda

i have that in a startup script so my hdd uses dma on every boot. i get 29-32 MB/sec.
-malix

Bebo · 08-23-2003, 11:30 AM

Hi, and thanks for your comment. So you say it works for you? That's odd... I've tried exactly that command, but all I get is this "HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Invalid argument" message. As I said in my previous post, I'm using a customized 2.4.21-0.25mdk kernel, and I think I have the correct options set; "grep -i dma" on the config file gives:

Code:

CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_FORCED is not set
CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_ONLYDISK is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_WIP is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ADMA=y
# CONFIG_HPT34X_AUTODMA is not set
CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_IVB is not set
# CONFIG_DMA_NONPCI is not set
CONFIG_SCSI_EATA_DMA=m
CONFIG_SCSI_SYM53C8XX_DMA_ADDRESSING_MODE=0
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2_PHYS_DMA is not set
CONFIG_DMASCC=m

However, I have some vague memory of reading somewhere that the 2.4.21 kernel has some problems with the DMA. Does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks

malix · 08-23-2003, 02:34 PM

I think I read also that the 2.4.21 kernel has some dma issues. I'm running 2.4.22-rc2-ac3 and i did the same grep on my config file and besides a few extra lines, the only differing option was that i had the following set to 1, whereas you have it set to 0.

CONFIG_SCSI_SYM53C8XX_DMA_ADDRESSING_MODE=1

I don't even know if that config option would affect the hard drive we have b/c we don't have scsi. Worth a shot tho. Good luck.