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LVM & high system load

linux-lvm Dominique LARCHEY-WENDLING 3 participants 6 messages May 1, 2001 – May 2, 2001

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#0 lore raw

Hi,

I am newbie to LVM. I am experiencing high cpu load (system time > 90%) and
relatively poor IO perf. (my cpu is only PII 333) on LVM volumes. I have tested reiserfs and ext2fs and I only get about 2.5Mb/s with 100% CPU load,
mostly system time.

Due to some failures of vgscan (no volume found) and vgchange (core dumps,)
I had to upgrade my 2.4.3 kernel to LVM beta7 and also the system tools. Now
it seems that theses tools work but I still have very high loads, much higher than what I would have on a fs lying on a partition.

My logical volumes are not stripped.

Is this a known issue ?

Thanks in advance,

DL

Signature · 112 lines
Dominique Larchey
LORIA, Nancy, France
Tel. (Work) +33 (0) 3 83 59 20 13

----------------------------

[root@charlie temp]# /usr/sbin/vgdisplay mmedia                       
--- Volume group ---
VG Name               mmedia
VG Access             read/write
VG Status             available/resizable
VG #                  0
MAX LV                256
Cur LV                3
Open LV               3
MAX LV Size           255.99 GB
Max PV                256
Cur PV                3
Act PV                3
VG Size               28.49 GB
PE Size               4 MB
Total PE              7294
Alloc PE / Size       5066 / 19.79 GB
Free  PE / Size       2228 / 8.7 GB
VG UUID               dF3isK-xdlk-YF7u-FwxQ-KnPQ-jgG6-qjt73X

[root@charlie temp]# /usr/sbin/pvdisplay /dev/hda1 /dev/hda5 /dev/hda6
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name               /dev/hda1
VG Name               mmedia
PV Size               9.77 GB / NOT usable 1.37 MB [LVM: 130 KB]
PV#                   1
PV Status             available
Allocatable           yes (but full)
Cur LV                1
PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              2500
Free PE               0
Allocated PE          2500
PV UUID               3aeAAl-88en-VZxJ-84gE-Uaxu-AWZm-zoA3jC

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name               /dev/hda5
VG Name               mmedia
PV Size               9.77 GB / NOT usable 1.37 MB [LVM: 130 KB]
PV#                   2
PV Status             available
Allocatable           yes (but full)
Cur LV                3
PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              2500
Free PE               0
Allocated PE          2500
PV UUID               lUiRFu-JEhC-d5JS-Jycy-VFa8-2o2y-6I9V9S

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name               /dev/hda6
VG Name               mmedia
PV Size               8.96 GB / NOT usable 1.73 MB [LVM: 129 KB]
PV#                   3
PV Status             available
Allocatable           yes
Cur LV                0
PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              2294
Free PE               2228
Allocated PE          66
PV UUID               GOf2OV-khJd-w1cJ-AEk3-RvyA-Wdly-p5OuWd

[root@charlie temp]# /usr/sbin/lvdisplay /dev/mmedia/music
/dev/mmedia/temp /dev/mmedia/test 
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/mmedia/music
VG Name                mmedia
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
LV #                   2
# open                 1
LV Size                9 GB
Current LE             2304
Allocated LE           2304
Allocation             next free
Read ahead sectors     120
Block device           58:1

--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/mmedia/temp
VG Name                mmedia
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
LV #                   1
# open                 1
LV Size                9.79 GB
Current LE             2506
Allocated LE           2506
Allocation             next free
Read ahead sectors     120
Block device           58:0

--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/mmedia/test
VG Name                mmedia
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
LV #                   3
# open                 1
LV Size                1 GB
Current LE             256
Allocated LE           256
Allocation             next free
Read ahead sectors     120
Block device           58:2
#1 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · Dominique LARCHEY-WENDLING

relatively poor IO perf. (my cpu is only PII 333) on LVM volumes. I have tested reiserfs and ext2fs and I only get about 2.5Mb/s with 100% CPU load,
mostly system time.

More over, doing a CPU intensive task (like kernel comp.) (not involving LVM, the
sources are not on a LV) cut the IO perf. of LVM fs by half.

So it seems that the LVM is eating a lot of CPU on my system and this is what is limiting fs perf.

DL

Signature · 3 lines
Dominique Larchey
LORIA, Nancy, France
Tel. (Work) +33 (0) 3 83 59 20 13
#2 lore raw
In reply to Dominique LARCHEY-WENDLING
Quoted 2 lines · Dominique Larchey

I am newbie to LVM. I am experiencing high cpu load (system time > 90%) and relatively poor IO perf. (my cpu is only PII 333) on LVM volumes.

Note that I am running LVM on Pentium 90 w 16MB RAM and no problems...

Quoted 2 lines

I have tested reiserfs and ext2fs and I only get about 2.5Mb/s with 100% CPU load, mostly system time.

There is one other person that has reported very slow LVM performance. However, there is no obvious reason why they have performance issues, and others are unable to reproduce this problem.

Can you please try the following and report results:

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512 time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=65536 time dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null bs=512 time dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null bs=65536

Cheers, Andreas

Signature · 3 lines
Andreas Dilger                               Turbolinux filesystem development
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
#3 lore raw
Quoted 10 lines · Andreas Dilger

There is one other person that has reported very slow LVM performance. However, there is no obvious reason why they have performance issues, and others are unable to reproduce this problem.

Can you please try the following and report results:

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512 time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=65536 time dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null bs=512 time dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null bs=65536

Here are the tests I have done ... I use the command line

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=1k count=500k

to fill up the buffer cache before any timing measure. I point out that /dev/mmedia/music resides on /dev/hda5

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m37.113s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m35.437s

Ok I am ridiculous ... this has nothing to do with LVM. It has to do with DMA set off by default by linux 2.4. This is the reason of poor IO perf. and CPU eating. (as you might have understood, I usually do not use IDE drives)

After DMA is set on,

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.934s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.110s

Sorry for anoying you with my stupidity ...

Perhaps poor perf. for the other person is also DMA related ?-)

Thanks anyway

DL

Signature · 3 lines
Dominique Larchey
LORIA, Nancy, France
Tel. (Work) +33 (0) 3 83 59 20 13
#4 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · Dominique Larchey

I point out that /dev/mmedia/music resides on /dev/hda5

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m37.113s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m35.437s

LVM shows 4.7% overhead. This is not so great.

Quoted 10 lines

Ok I am ridiculous ... this has nothing to do with LVM. It has to do with DMA set off by default by linux 2.4. This is the reason of poor IO perf. and CPU eating.

After DMA is set on,

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.934s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.110s

Good news - not an LVM problem. Bad news - LVM shows 6.8% overhead.

Quoted 1 line

Perhaps poor perf. for the other person is also DMA related ?-)

No, the other person has drastically different performance with LVM for 512-byte I/O compared to raw disk. For 64k-byte I/O performance on LVM and raw disk are the same. I _suppose_ that if I/O is done in small chunks that PIO mode will have more overhead. Maybe worth asking if CPU is high when he is doing 512-byte I/Os.

Cheers, Andreas

Signature · 3 lines
Andreas Dilger                               Turbolinux filesystem development
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
#5 lore raw
Quoted 14 lines · Andreas Dilger
Quoted 6 lines · Dominique Larchey

I point out that /dev/mmedia/music resides on /dev/hda5

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m37.113s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m35.437s

LVM shows 4.7% overhead. This is not so great.

Quoted 4 lines

Ok I am ridiculous ... this has nothing to do with LVM. It has to do with DMA set off by default by linux 2.4. This is the reason of poor IO perf. and CPU eating.

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 6 lines

After DMA is set on,

time dd if=/dev/mmedia/music of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.934s
time dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/null bs=512
count=200000 0m12.110s

Good news - not an LVM problem. Bad news - LVM shows 6.8% overhead.

Did nothing else produce io load while the test on the LV was running?

Did you repeat tests in order to get statistic certainty?

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Perhaps poor perf. for the other person is also DMA related ?-)

No, the other person has drastically different performance with LVM for 512-byte I/O compared to raw disk. For 64k-byte I/O performance on LVM and raw disk are the same. I _suppose_ that if I/O is done in small chunks that PIO mode will have more overhead. Maybe worth asking if CPU is high when he is doing 512-byte I/Os.

Yep.

Quoted 10 lines

Cheers, Andreas

Signature · 7 lines
Andreas Dilger                               Turbolinux filesystem development
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
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Signature · 15 lines
Regards,
Heinz    -- The LVM Guy --

*** Software bugs are stupid.
    Nevertheless it needs not so stupid people to solve them ***

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