Slow performance on Hoary/Gutsy

Sun May 4 19:45:03 UTC 2008

There is a swap partition but the used flag is 0. I do not know if this
is normal. 

Running hdparm -Tt resulted in a strange result when running it
on /dev/sda4, which is my '/' partition. This partition is about 30 Gig,
but hdparm still complains that it is to small. 'fdisk' lists it as a
'Extended' partition. I am not sure if this extended partition is
necessary(?). 

swapon -s
Filename   Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda5  partition 1951856 0 -1

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1ed81ed7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3649    29310561   83  Linux
/dev/sda4            3650       14593    87907680    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            3650        3892     1951866   82  Linux swap /
Solaris
/dev/sda6            3893       14593    85955751   83  Linux

torost at media:~$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 Timing cached reads:   724 MB in  2.00 seconds = 361.74 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  112 MB in  3.02 seconds =  37.09 MB/sec
torost at media:~$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda4

/dev/sda4:
read(2097152) returned 1024 bytes
 Timing buffered disk reads:  read() hit EOF - device too small
torost at media:~$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda6

/dev/sda6:
 Timing cached reads:   678 MB in  2.00 seconds = 339.04 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  118 MB in  3.02 seconds =  39.04 MB/sec
torost at media:~$ 

 sudo gpart /dev/sda

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Linux ext2), size(28623mb), offset(0mb)
Possible extended partition at offset(28623mb)
   Possible partition(Linux swap), size(1906mb), offset(28623mb)
   Possible partition(Linux ext2), size(83941mb), offset(30529mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(Linux ext2 filesystem): primary 
   Partition(Linux swap or Solaris/x86): logical 
   Partition(Linux ext2 filesystem): logical 
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
   type: 131(0x83)(Linux ext2 filesystem)
   size: 28623mb #s(58621120) s(63-58621182)
   chs:  (0/1/1)-(1023/254/63)d (0/1/1)-(3648/254/61)r

Primary partition(2)
   type: 015(0x0F)(Extended DOS, LBA)
   size: 85847mb #s(175815360) s(58621185-234436544)
   chs:  (1023/254/63)-(1023/254/63)d (3649/0/1)-(14592/254/63)r

Primary partition(3)
   type: 000(0x00)(unused)
   size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
   chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
   type: 000(0x00)(unused)
   size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
   chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 11:39 -0500, sktsee wrote: 
> On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 16:09 +0200, Torbjörn Österdahl wrote: 
> > Obviously the version I installed last week was 8.04 Hardy Heron. Hoary
> > Hedgehog was 5.04, if I remember things correctly. Typo.
> > 
> > Torbjörn
> > 
> > 
> > On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 08:57 -0500, Anna EdwARds wrote:
> > > If i were you, i would back up anything of any importance and
> > > reinstall 7.04 if you can find it and wait untill the next lts
> > > (following old pattern it should be 8.06) and then stick with lts
> > > editions. If you want a 7.04 disk i have plenty to spair just give me
> > > a shout. 
> > > 
> > > _____________________________ 
> > > Sent from my phone using flurry - Get free mobile email and news at:
> > > http://www.flurry.com 
> > > 
> > > --- Original Message --- 
> > > Date: Sun May 04 06:23:21 PDT 2008 
> > > From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Torbj=F6rn_=D6sterdahl?= 
> > > To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com 
> > > Subject: Slow performance on Hoary/Gutsy 
> > > --- 
> > > 
> > > I have a very slow performance on my system. The machine is somewhat
> > > aged; it is a Nvida Nforce 2 with a AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU and 1GB
> > > RAM. I have used Ubuntu since version 5.04, I do not know if I just
> > > need to take this degradation into account? With Hoary I did a new
> > > install for the first time since April 2005. Previously I always used
> > > the upgrade option. After the install I noticed that the harddrive is
> > > identified with as a serial ATA drive, although I am confident that
> > > this old drive is does not have a serial ATA interface. Could this be
> > > the reason for slow performance? DMA seem to be enabled from what I
> > > can see. 
> > > 
> > > I am grateful for all sorts of advice before I resort to buying some
> > > new hardware. 
> > > 
> > > sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda 
> > > 
> > > /dev/sda: 
> > > 
> > > Model=ST3120024A , FwRev=3.33 , SerialNo=3KA1EJGH 
> > > Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% } 
> > > RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4 
> > > BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?16? 
> > > CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=234441648 
> > > IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} 
> > > PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
> > > DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 
> > > UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 
> > > AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled 
> > > Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2:
> > > ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6 
> > > 
> > > * signifies the current active mode 
> > > 
> > > dmesg|grep sda 
> > > [ 33.856254] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 234441648 512-byte hardware sectors
> > > (120034 MB) 
> > > [ 33.856271] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off 
> > > [ 33.856274] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 
> > > [ 33.856296] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache:
> > > enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 
> > > [ 33.856357] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 234441648 512-byte hardware sectors
> > > (120034 MB) 
> > > [ 33.856369] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off 
> > > [ 33.856373] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 
> > > [ 33.856391] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache:
> > > enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 
> > > [ 33.856396] sda:<4>Driver 'sr' needs updating - please use bus_type
> > > methods 
> > > [ 33.871214] sda1 sda4 < sda5 sda6> 
> > > [ 33.891302] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk 
> > > [ 51.277416] Adding 1951856k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1
> > > across:1951856k 
> > > [ 51.836651] EXT3 FS on sda1, internal journal 
> > > [ 52.590173] EXT3 FS on sda6, internal journal 
> > > 
> 
> The device node name change from /dev/hda to /dev/sda results from the
> libata library handling the SATA, and/or PATA devices on your system.
> It's pretty much a cosmetic change as libata supports most PATA devices
> just fine. Usually it's really old drives, or mainboards with quirky
> controllers that can be problematic. 
> 
> My drive is a Seagate (ST380215A) also, and the output I get from hdparm
> and dmesg is practically identical to what you posted, and I've not
> suffered any performance hit using libata. Of course, I haven't upgraded
> to hardy yet, so I may be in for unpleasant surprise when I do. :/
> 
> I think the most likely cause for the performance loss is that one or
> more processes have malfunctioned and are eating up CPU cycles, or
> causing excessive IO. Here's a few suggestions in no order to help
> troubleshoot the problem.
> 
> 1. Run top, say, 10 minutes after rebooting to see if any process is
> hoarding the cpy or causing excessive io.
> 
> 2. make sure the swap file is on. "swapon -s" should list the active
> swap.
> 
> 3. Install bootchart to audit the system's boot sequence. 
> 
> 4. Have a sane host name. If you give your machine a host name like
> myhostname.com, a lot of apps are going to spend a lot of time doing
> lookups and timing out because it isn't a valid registered name with
> DNS. Just set the hostname to a name without a domain, or to something
> like myhostname.site in the /etc/hosts file.
> 
> 5. Compare performance between booting with a Gutsy LiveCD vs. a Hardy
> LiveCD. Mount your hardisk and perform timing tests with hdparm -Tt
> 
> 6. Turn off Desktop effects if they are enabled.
> 
> That should get you started. Hopefully, other list members wiil chime in
> with other suggestions.
> 