Ubuntu 8.04, bad response time when HDD active

Wed Jun 25 15:18:22 UTC 2008

Update;

It said DMA was in use with 'hdparm -I', but 'hdparm -d' shows otherwise:

root at akane:/home/digimer# hdparm -d /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  using_dma     =  0 (off)
root at akane:/home/digimer# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

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

lolwut?!

Madi

Madison Kelly wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>   I updated my Ubuntu 7.10 system to 8.04 and at first things were fine. 
> Now though, my system stutters a LOT (like now, writing this, the text 
> keeps coming in chunks rather than seeing the characters as I type 
> them). I am not sure exactly why, as my memory isn't full (not 
> swapping), my disk is running in DMA mode and no particular process is 
> going nuts in 'top'.
> 
>   It seems to bog down when there is disk activity though and/or a 
> download happening. I've also noticed that my disk went from being 
> recognized as '/dev/sda' to '/dev/hda' again (something that changed a 
> few versions back). I am not sure if this change coincided with my loss 
> of performance though.
> 
>   Has anyone else had any troubles?
> 
> My machine is an IBM Thinkpad T40, 1.5GHz Pentium M (running at 1.5GHz), 
> 1GB RAM (45% in use atm) and a Seagate Momentus 5,400 RPM 60BG drive. 
> While writing this email with a bittorrent running and not much else my 
> load average is a very high 2.3. The stutter is so bad I can't listen to 
> my music and even typing this is difficult. This machine *used* to be 
> very fast by my humble standards until a few weeks ago.
> 
> Help!! :)
> 
> Madi
> 
> Some values:
> 
> root at akane:/home/digimer# hdparm -tT /dev/hda
> 
> /dev/hda:
>  Timing cached reads:   384 MB in  2.00 seconds = 191.59 MB/sec
>  Timing buffered disk reads:    6 MB in  3.23 seconds =   1.86 MB/sec
> 
> root at akane:/home/digimer# hdparm -I /dev/hda
> 
> /dev/hda:
> 
> ATA device, with non-removable media
>     Model Number:       ST960822A
>     Serial Number:      3LF255XE
>     Firmware Revision:  3.02
> Standards:
>     Used: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2
>     Supported: 6 5 4
> Configuration:
>     Logical        max    current
>     cylinders    16383    16383
>     heads        16    16
>     sectors/track    63    63
>     --
>     CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
>     LBA    user addressable sectors:  117210240
>     device size with M = 1024*1024:       57231 MBytes
>     device size with M = 1000*1000:       60011 MBytes (60 GB)
> Capabilities:
>     LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
>     Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
>     R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16    Current = ?
>     Advanced power management level: 128
>     Recommended acoustic management value: 254, current value: 0
>     DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
>          Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
>     PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>          Cycle time: no flow control=240ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
> Commands/features:
>     Enabled    Supported:
>        *    SMART feature set
>             Security Mode feature set
>        *    Power Management feature set
>        *    Write cache
>        *    Look-ahead
>        *    Host Protected Area feature set
>        *    WRITE_BUFFER command
>        *    READ_BUFFER command
>        *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
>        *    Advanced Power Management feature set
>             SET_MAX security extension
>        *    Device Configuration Overlay feature set
>        *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
>        *    SMART error logging
>        *    SMART self-test
>        *    IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
> Security:
>     Master password revision code = 65534
>         supported
>     not    enabled
>     not    locked
>         frozen
>     not    expired: security count
>     not    supported: enhanced erase
> HW reset results:
>     CBLID- above Vih
>     Device num = 0 determined by CSEL
> Checksum: correct
> 
> top - 11:09:18 up  1:28,  4 users,  load average: 2.29, 1.60, 1.07
> Mem:   1294884k total,  1266912k used,    27972k free,    80500k buffers
> Swap:   979924k total,        0k used,   979924k free,   608460k cached
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  SHR S %CPU  RES %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>    41 root      15  -5     0    0 S 14.0    0  0.0   0:27.80 kblockd/0
>  5409 root      20   0  3420 1004 S  4.0 1156  0.1   0:03.62 
> hald-addon-stor
>  6087 digimer   20   0  176m  22m S  4.0  68m  5.5   0:47.05 
> thunderbird-bin
>  5495 root      20   0  135m  10m S  2.7  45m  3.6   3:35.29 Xorg
>  8238 digimer   20   0 46268 4988 R  2.3 7216  0.6   0:31.00 xmms
>  8172 digimer   20   0 77884  14m S  1.7  27m  2.2   0:29.96 
> /usr/bin/gnome-
>  4916 root      20   0  4368 1476 S  1.3 1960  0.2   0:00.96 openvpn
>  5378 root      20   0  3416 1012 S  1.3 1160  0.1   0:04.18 
> hald-addon-inpu
>     4 root      15  -5     0    0 S  0.7    0  0.0   0:01.68 ksoftirqd/0
>  2390 root      15  -5     0    0 S  0.7    0  0.0   0:27.86 kjournald
>  5094 root      20   0 18380  756 S  0.7  932  0.1   0:10.42 cpufreqd

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