From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Sep 14 17:50:48 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C8DD237B400 for ; Sat, 14 Sep 2002 17:50:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from farley.org (dsl-64-194-106-77.telocity.com [64.194.106.77]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 09C0543E6E for ; Sat, 14 Sep 2002 17:50:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sean-freebsd@farley.org) Received: from thor.farley.org (owh8jkz923ebhjqs@thor.farley.org [192.168.1.5]) by gw.farley.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g8F0ogUT032278 for ; Sat, 14 Sep 2002 19:50:43 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from sean-freebsd@farley.org) Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 19:50:42 -0500 (CDT) From: Sean Farley X-X-Sender: sean@thor.farley.org To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Slow I/O responsiveness with UDMA133 Message-ID: <20020914194458.A271-100000@thor.farley.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG The hardware list seems quiet, so I thought I would try here as well. My system: FreeBSD thor.farley.org 4.7-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 4.7-PRERELEASE #4: Sat Sep 14 14:29:53 CDT 2002 root@thor.farley.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/THOR i386 I have a question. After building a new system, I noticed that it was less responsive when it came to I/O concerning the hard drive. The standard XFree86 source extraction would slow down anything else that tried to access something off of the drive. It could take at least 10-20 seconds for a login attempt from the console to prompt for the password after I entered the user ID. On my old system this was not the case. It would slow down the system, but it would be much more responsive. In both cases the write cache was disabled. I have fiddled with the BIOS without success. Would anyone be able to help me? This is driving me nuts. :) With write cache enabled it does perform better, but I would the new computer to at least equal the old system without it enabled. Here are some benchmarks on my computers. I believe the sequential output is the killer. atacontrol does show the new system to be using UDMA133. Both drives are on a controller by themselves. ---------------------------------------------- New System ---------------------------------------------- Athlon XP 2100 Maxtor (76345MB [155114/16/63] at ata1-master UDMA133) 7200 RPM hw.ata.ata_dma: 1 hw.ata.wc: 0 hw.ata.tags: 0 hw.ata.atapi_dma: 0 Bonnie++ test (w/o write cache) ------------------------------- Writing with putc()...done Writing intelligently...done Rewriting...done Reading with getc()...done Reading intelligently...done start 'em...done...done...done... Create files in sequential order...done. Stat files in sequential order...done. Delete files in sequential order...done. Create files in random order...done. Stat files in random order...done. Delete files in random order...done. Version 1.02c ------Sequential Output------ -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP System 1 256M 10757 10 10767 3 11188 4 --Sequential Input- --Random- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP 67468 97 468575 99 12770 29 ------Sequential Create------ -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 9880 17 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ --------Random Create-------- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ ---------------------------------------------- Old System ---------------------------------------------- PIII 450 Seagate (27199MB [55262/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33) 5400RPM hw.ata.ata_dma: 1 hw.ata.wc: 0 hw.ata.tags: 0 hw.ata.atapi_dma: 0 Bonnie++ test ------------- Writing with putc()...done Writing intelligently...done Rewriting...done Reading with getc()...done Reading intelligently...done start 'em...done...done...done... Create files in sequential order...done. Stat files in sequential order...done. Delete files in sequential order...done. Create files in random order...done. Stat files in random order...done. Delete files in random order...done. Version 1.02c ------Sequential Output------ -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP System 2 256M 16246 89 16052 24 7069 14 --Sequential Input- --Random- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP 14597 94 17455 14 462.2 3 ------Sequential Create------ -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 5081 46 +++++ +++ 13559 95 --------Random Create-------- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 8218 68 +++++ +++ 13176 94 Thank you, Sean ----------------------- sean-freebsd@farley.org PGP key: http://www.farley.org/~sean/pgp.key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message