Mailing List Archive: AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness...

AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness...

Feb 16, 2006, 7:58 AM

Post #1 of 5 (2182 views)

Hey all.

Gentoo Linux AMD64 - running pretty sweet - except, I've noticed that
even under minimal loads, my system seems to have mini-lockups
frequently. For instance, when downloading a mere 10 emails, my system
seems to choke - to the point where I can't even move my mouse for a
good 10 seconds or so. Opening a gnome-terminal is painful - sometimes,
apps make the desktop freeze for a good 20-30 seconds. I did a large
emerge last night using the gnome-terminal, and it rendered my Gnome
desktop almost completely frozen.

Any idea what might be causing this, and what steps I should take to
troubleshoot this? The best I can tell, the problem seems to be hard
drive related, as it does a lot of chewing before the app finally let's
rip. The hard drive is an IDE, not SATA as you might expect from the
info below. Other than these strange mini-lockups, my system is buzzing
right along at a good clip!

Thanks!

System specs:

uname -a
Linux jmg 2.6.15-gentoo-r5 #1 SMP Thu Feb 16 05:56:55 EST 2006 x86_64
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 47
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2188.889
cache size : 512 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt
lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm
bogomips : 4386.19
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc

free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1505 1475 30 0 201 417
-/+ buffers/cache: 856 649
Swap: 487 0 487

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI-X Root Port
00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI
IDE Controller ATI
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV41.0 (rev a2)
02:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host
Controller (rev 80)
02:09.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]
(rev 78)
02:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB0400 Audigy2 Value

hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 2992 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1495.91 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 4 MB in 3.69 seconds = 1.08 MB/sec

emerge info
Portage 2.0.54 (default-linux/amd64/2005.1, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.5-r2,
2.6.15-gentoo-r5 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.15-gentoo-r5 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14
ccache version 2.3 [enabled]
dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6
sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1
sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1
sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-fomit-frame-pointer -march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config
/usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib64/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config
/var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-fomit-frame-pointer -march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo
ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo
ftp://gentoo.netnitco.net/pub/mirrors/gentoo/source/
http://gentoo.netnitco.net"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="amd64 X aac aim alsa audiofile avi bash-completion berkdb
bitmap-fonts bmp browserplugin bzip2 calendar cdr crypt cups curl dbus
directfb divx4linux dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd exif expat
fam fbcon foomaticdb fortran ftp gd gdbm gif glut gnome gnutls gpm
gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml hal howl icq idn imagemagick imap imlib ipv6
jabber jack java javascript jpeg kerberos lcms ldap libwww lzw lzw-tiff
mad mhash mikmod mime mng mozilla mp3 mpeg msn mtrr mysql ncurses nls
nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia ogg oggvorbis openal opengl oscar oss pam
pdflib perl php png python quicktime readline ruby samba sasl scanner
sdl snmp sockets sox spell ssl tcltk tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts
type1-fonts udev unicode usb userlocales v4l vcd vorbis xine xml2 xmms
xpm xv xvid yahoo zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
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Re: AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness... [ In reply to ]

agaffney at gentoo

Feb 16, 2006, 8:08 AM

Post #2 of 5 (2099 views)

Permalink

Jeff wrote:
> Hey all.
>
> Gentoo Linux AMD64 - running pretty sweet - except, I've noticed that
> even under minimal loads, my system seems to have mini-lockups
> frequently. For instance, when downloading a mere 10 emails, my system
> seems to choke - to the point where I can't even move my mouse for a
> good 10 seconds or so. Opening a gnome-terminal is painful - sometimes,
> apps make the desktop freeze for a good 20-30 seconds. I did a large
> emerge last night using the gnome-terminal, and it rendered my Gnome
> desktop almost completely frozen.

What does this have to do with security? Please take this question to the
gentoo-user mailing list.

--
Andrew Gaffney http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer Installer Project

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Re: AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness... [ In reply to ]

christophe at garault

Feb 16, 2006, 8:09 AM

Post #3 of 5 (2091 views)

Permalink

Jeff a écrit :

>Hey all.
>
>
Hello,

>hdparm -tT /dev/hda
>
>/dev/hda:
> Timing cached reads: 2992 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1495.91 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 4 MB in 3.69 seconds = 1.08 MB/sec
>
>
Are you kitting? I can't believe that... Have a look to your hard drive
conf: man hdparm and especially the -d directive which activate the DMA.
You should have at least 60 MB/sec in the buffered disk reads.

my 0.02 euros.

--
Christophe Garault

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Re: AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness... [ In reply to ]

robert at sixthings

Feb 16, 2006, 8:43 AM

Post #4 of 5 (2102 views)

Permalink

Hello Jeff,

I've had 3 machines exhibit this kind of behaviour in the last few months.

On the first machine, it was an intermitten IDE controller failure (probably
related to heat and expansion of motherboard compoenents). I was able to
bypass it by installing a PCI SATA controller. The way that I was able to
figure this out was by running knoppix on it (I tried windows too, just in
case). When running knoppix (and, that OTHER os), the problems still
occured.

The second and third machines were having problems because the wrong drivers
were loaded for the motherboard IDE controller. On the first of these
machines, I ran knoppix and it correctly loaded the drivers (I used lsmod to
find them ;-). On the second of these machines, it was a production machine,
and it took a lot of time because I couldn't just bring it down. I was
getting "operation not permitted" when trying to enable DMA. Eventually, I
had performed lspci, and saw the controller, then noticed that it was
compiled into the kernel as a different controller.

As far as it goes for your situation, I would recommend running knoppix to see
if the autodetection can resolve it. If that doesn't work, it may be that
it's simply getting confused between those two similar controllers. Does
"hdparm /dev/hda" show any useful info? How about "hdparm -i /dev/hda"? If
you try to make settings (such as set DMA "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda") does it spit
out errors? I think hdparm may tell you more in this situation because the
disc reads are insanely slow (1MB/sec should be more like 50MB/sec). It
might be worth walking through this just to see if it gives you any errors:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdparm_to_improve_IDE_device_performance

I hope this gives you enough to go on...

Regards,

Robert Larson

On Thursday 16 February 2006 08:58 am, Jeff wrote:
> Hey all.
>
> Gentoo Linux AMD64 - running pretty sweet - except, I've noticed that
> even under minimal loads, my system seems to have mini-lockups
> frequently. For instance, when downloading a mere 10 emails, my system
> seems to choke - to the point where I can't even move my mouse for a
> good 10 seconds or so. Opening a gnome-terminal is painful - sometimes,
> apps make the desktop freeze for a good 20-30 seconds. I did a large
> emerge last night using the gnome-terminal, and it rendered my Gnome
> desktop almost completely frozen.
>
> Any idea what might be causing this, and what steps I should take to
> troubleshoot this? The best I can tell, the problem seems to be hard
> drive related, as it does a lot of chewing before the app finally let's
> rip. The hard drive is an IDE, not SATA as you might expect from the
> info below. Other than these strange mini-lockups, my system is buzzing
> right along at a good clip!
>
> Thanks!
>
[snip]
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gentoo-security@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: AMD64 + Hard Drive weirdness... [ In reply to ]

jmg_071769 at comcast

Feb 16, 2006, 9:23 AM

Post #5 of 5 (2099 views)

Permalink

My apologies. I'm running on about 3 hours of sleep. Moving over to
gentoo-user.

Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> Jeff wrote:
>
>> Hey all.
>>
>> Gentoo Linux AMD64 - running pretty sweet - except, I've noticed that
>> even under minimal loads, my system seems to have mini-lockups
>> frequently. For instance, when downloading a mere 10 emails, my system
>> seems to choke - to the point where I can't even move my mouse for a
>> good 10 seconds or so. Opening a gnome-terminal is painful - sometimes,
>> apps make the desktop freeze for a good 20-30 seconds. I did a large
>> emerge last night using the gnome-terminal, and it rendered my Gnome
>> desktop almost completely frozen.
>
>
> What does this have to do with security? Please take this question to
> the gentoo-user mailing list.
>

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This bounty hunter is my kind of scum: fearless and
inventive.

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