[geeks] IDE question

[Rob Fielding]

Kevin wrote:
> These machines are running 2.4.19 (patched with xfs and
> cryptoapi.)  They are running the default scheduler.

I've never had a problem using a stock kernel. Only seen this either using AC 
patches ~ 2.4.18/19 and the O1 scheduler on stock RedHat9 or WOLK kernels - 
you'd get mediocre 'not-that-heavy' disk access and near catatonic UI/shell 
switching performance on a P4 with 2 100MHz disk controllers. I'm getting it 
right now occasionally on this dual p3 933 but I am running ximian desktop2 
and attempting to update it whilst running Mozilla...

So I guess the only other questions remaining are - do you have anything 
exotic with respect to your disk controller, is it being detected correctly, 
do you see any dma timeouts in dmesg, is dma on, have you tried different IDE 
cables, is this disk to disk across different IDE buses or same bus or same 
disk ...

Even easier - have you tried another stock kernel and experienced this ?

I have to say that I've generally been loosing favour with 2.4 all thru it's 
life. I don't claim to contribute muchly to linux as a whole so never complain 
about it, but I did used to think I should have stopped at 2.0 or 2.2 ;)

Hey, at least this will make 2.6 appear sooooooooo much faster.


-- 

Rob Fielding	
rob at dsvr.net	Development	www.dsvr.co.uk