Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 03 Jan 2002 01:04:11 UTC | From | Bill <> | Subject | Slowdowns and Systems Pauses with 2.4.x. |
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I have seen a lot of reports about 2.4.x having all sorts of slowdowns and VM issues. While way out of my league here, I wanted to comment on some good behavior I noticed. During my most recent recompile of 2.4.7, my system performance went way up. Responsiveness is excellent nearly regardless of what I throw at it. I am no programmer and I am not sure if any information I can provide would be useful to anyone, but I would be willing to offer whatever I can to aid kernel hackers in tracking down what seems to be hitting a lot of people with 2.4.x.
System: Dell GX100 566 Celeron w/192meg, 184meg swap ATA66 10gig WD 102BB (ext2fs) ATAPI CDROM (not sure of brand) onboard i810 4meg agp onboard 3com905c ES 1371
Linux version 2.4.7(no patches), (gcc version 2.95.3 19991030 (prerelease)) XFree86 4.0.1, IceWM 1.0.4.
This compile was with no module support(first time I tried it that way) and no devfs. I really don't know what information to supply without posting huge amounts of potentially worthless data, but let me give an example of the responsiveness.
Simultaneous user processes: cp a 675meg file to new dir in xterm(bash), ftp to remote system via ethernet averaging about 4MB/s, file size >600meg, accept incoming ftp using inetd/wuftpd via ethernet averaging about 4MB/s, file size > 600meg, edge enhance a 5000 x 4000 jpg with gimp xmms playing ogg files cdparanoia ripping cd at 1x (the rip was successful) Opera and Netscape both up with lkml archives, several pages each. licq online tradeclient email - retrieving from 3 servers launched a second gimp and opened a 400x400 jpg
and finally ogg encoder kicked in via grip
Until the ogg encoder kicked in the cpu load was about 5.5 and the xmms was playing perfect. The encoder started to cause a skip and the mouse picked up a occasional, very short pause <1/4sec, but the the system remained very useable. During the slightly over 3 minutes of ftp in both directions, switching desktops, opening new xterms, command line access, scrolling and changing pages in browerrs, etc were all responsive. Slower of course, but considering the load was now over 7 it was not even near painful. Average delays were maybe 1/2 - 3/4 second.
Based on previous configs with this system using 2.2.17, 2.2.19, 2.4.7 and 2.4.17, the above would have made this thing roll over and die for 10 minutes. I don't know what I changed that caused this, but I like it.
During this process, the system also swapped over 80 meg to disk with all the other reads and writes going on. Again, if any of my config would be useful, please request whatever info/tests you need.
Bill
Best Regards, Bill - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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