Slow performance

[carrja99]

I've been using Debian for quite awhile now, but after repartionaing my hard drive I reinstalled it from scratch, it seems I have a problem that I didn't have before. It seems that large processes can REALLY bog the system down... for example, if I unpack a 80mb tar file, the system will slow to a crawl (and I mean being unable to type in a terminal when X is not running or do anything else) for the duration of the running process. Heck, I timed it the other night... it took 2 minutes and 30 seconds!

What could be causing this? I toggled DMA on for both hard drives and I still seem to have the same recurring problem.

I'm running Debian Sid with a custom compiled 2.4.21 kernel on a 1100mhz celeron with 256mb of RAM. I have 4 IDE drives connected (a cdrom, cd burner, and 2 Maxtor Hard Drives). Please let me know if there is any other info I could provide that may help with this, thanks in advance!

[o0zi]

Sometimes when your hostname is configured incorrectly you can see big slowdowns. Take a look in /etc/HOSTNAME and tell us what's there.

[nry]

You should maybe have tried sarge as opposed to sid, since sid will never be a released version whereas sarge will be. I've recently installed sarge and it flies!

Regards,

nry

[je_fro]

I like the $HOSTNAME suggestion...
Post Back!

[carrja99]

well, the host name was localhost, so I followed the directions I found in another thread and changed it to mandy. No speed change.

[Hayl]

if you are using a debian stock kernel, get rid of it and get one with preempt and IO elevator control such as CK-Sources or WOLK-Sources.

if you don't want to try that then check and see if your hard disks have their IRQs unmasked.

[ root@linuxbox /home/ddicks ] # hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 3736/255/63, sectors = 60030432, start = 0