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??
On Sat January 11 2003 07:37, Roe Peterson wrote:
>
> 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.
>
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>
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
--On Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:12:55 -0800 Andrew Morton
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat January 11 2003 07:37, Roe Peterson wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> 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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