dell precision m50 _very_ slow paging/swapping

DISCUSSION Roe Peterson 4 participants 4 messages Jan 11, 2003 – Jan 12, 2003

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Roe Peterson

author

2003-01-11 15:28 UTC #0 lore raw

Although Dell doesn't consider the precision M50 a laptop (it's a "portable workstation"), this list
looks like a good place to start :-)

I'm having a big problem with a brand-new M50. The symptoms persist whether I try Redhat 7.3
or 8.0.

Generally, everything is fine, right up to the time the machine starts paging out to disk. Then, the
system essentially grinds to a halt.

The paging activity eventually gets done, and, once things are running in RAM, the machine flies.

However, I've seen starting mozilla take ~45 seconds, and starting vi take 15!!!

This machine:

1.8Ghz Pentium 4 Pro Mobile CPU
256MB RAM
40 GB hard drive (userland benchmarks look good - 16-18 MB/sec
transfer rates)
nVidia Quadro 4 GoGl video
PIIX4 EIDE chipset
i810 compatible sound
Latest BIOS upgrade from Dell (A07)

I see the same result with redhat 7.3 and 8.0.

I've even disabled the PIIX support in the kernel, on the theory that something in the IDE
subsystem was responsible - no change, except (as expected) user mode disk IO slowed down
somewhat.

I freely admit I'm confused.

Dell support is:
1 - extremely frustrating
2 - totally useless

And I don't even want to talk about Redhat.

Can anyone point me at a theory, even??

Andrew Morton

2003-01-11 18:04 UTC #1 lore raw

Quoted 5 lines · Roe Peterson

Although Dell doesn't consider the precision M50 a laptop (it's a "portable workstation"), this list
looks like a good place to start :-)

Quoted 8 lines

I'm having a big problem with a brand-new M50. The symptoms persist whether I try Redhat 7.3
or 8.0.
Generally, everything is fine, right up to the time the machine starts paging out to disk. Then, the
system essentially grinds to a halt.

You'd need to determine whether the CPU is busy or idle when this is happening.

If it's busy, profile the kernel:

- boot with "profile=1" on the kernel command line

-
readprofile -r
<do something>
readprofile -v -m /boot/System.map | sort -n +2 | tail -40

It it's not busy, then:

while true
do
ps axl | grep ' D '
sleep 1
done &
<do something>

Andrew McGregor

2003-01-12 11:00 UTC #2 lore raw

Have you tried hdparm to see if the disk is in a stupid mode and needs something (DMA most likely) switched on to perform? Dell BIOSes often get this wrong. idebus=66 on the kernel command line is appropriate too.

Andrew

Quoted 45 lines · --On Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:12:55 -0800 Andrew Morton <[email protected]>…

Quoted 5 lines · Roe Peterson
Although Dell doesn't consider the precision M50 a laptop (it's a "portable workstation"), this list
looks like a good place to start :-)
Quoted 8 lines
I'm having a big problem with a brand-new M50. The symptoms persist whether I try Redhat 7.3
or 8.0.
Generally, everything is fine, right up to the time the machine starts paging out to disk. Then, the
system essentially grinds to a halt.
You'd need to determine whether the CPU is busy or idle when this is happening.
If it's busy, profile the kernel:
- boot with "profile=1" on the kernel command line
-
readprofile -r
<do something>
readprofile -v -m /boot/System.map | sort -n +2 | tail -40
It it's not busy, then:
while true
do
ps axl | grep ' D '
sleep 1
done &
<do something>
-
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Joel Jaeggli

2003-01-11 19:15 UTC #3 lore raw

In reply to Roe Peterson

hi,

which of the redhat kernels are you running on it? the m50 shares most of it's components with the inspiron 8200/4150 and latitude c640.

joelja

Quoted 56 lines · Roe Peterson

Although Dell doesn't consider the precision M50 a laptop (it's a "portable workstation"), this list
looks like a good place to start :-)
I'm having a big problem with a brand-new M50. The symptoms persist whether I try Redhat 7.3
or 8.0.
Generally, everything is fine, right up to the time the machine starts paging out to disk. Then, the
system essentially grinds to a halt.
The paging activity eventually gets done, and, once things are running in RAM, the machine flies.
However, I've seen starting mozilla take ~45 seconds, and starting vi take 15!!!
This machine:
1.8Ghz Pentium 4 Pro Mobile CPU
256MB RAM
40 GB hard drive (userland benchmarks look good - 16-18 MB/sec
transfer rates)
nVidia Quadro 4 GoGl video
PIIX4 EIDE chipset
i810 compatible sound
Latest BIOS upgrade from Dell (A07)
I see the same result with redhat 7.3 and 8.0.
I've even disabled the PIIX support in the kernel, on the theory that something in the IDE
subsystem was responsible - no change, except (as expected) user mode disk IO slowed down
somewhat.
I freely admit I'm confused.
Dell support is:
1 - extremely frustrating
2 - totally useless
And I don't even want to talk about Redhat.
Can anyone point me at a theory, even??
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [email protected]
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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