Helle there,
I've been, for the past days, setting up a fairly big diskless network
based on Linux. I've chosen to use 2.4.19 as the kernel because there
were some hardware requirements, and for most of the newer boxes, it
runs fine. However, for three of the older boxes, we have had some
pretty odd performance and stability issues. This message is about the
latest one, which is an ASUS P5S-B (has the infamous SIS 530 chipset)
on an intel eepro100 card. Details:
Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 530 Host (rev 2).
Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 8).
VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 6306
3D-AGP (rev a2)
We've been using NFS for the diskless boxes, of course, and for this
particular box, the CPU usage for everything is just so much higher its
amazing. It's so slow you can feel the repaints happening when running
X, even when listing directories using ls -lR. I'll show a summary of
bonnie runs on the root (NFS) partition:
1.02b ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
can (v2) 300M 4054 57 5121 2 3549 3 5942 91 10195 3 442.2 4
can (v3) 300M 5965 82 7861 3 2739 2 5437 82 9316 3 675.5 6
can (v3+) 300M 4721 66 2654 1 641 0 5454 74 5017 0 690.2 7
min (v3+) 300M 3170 95 1526 2 1118 3 2913 89 4061 2 474.9 21
tri (v3+) 300M 2708 96 5997 65 2806 76 2673 90 6064 73 351.9 64
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
can (v2) 16 44 0 4316 19 80 0 46 0 4684 8 68 0
can (v3) 16 2104 9 5060 16 2102 8 2149 6 5789 10 1833 6
can (v3+) 16 1666 7 4390 38 2103 8 1735 9 8859 17 2143 8
min (v3+) 16 1037 19 2467 45 1133 17 959 17 4645 26 1120 12
tri (v3+) 16 1066 35 1879 66 1125 28 978 30 4187 43 1334 32
Legend: hosts to the left, can is a K7-900 min and tri are K6-500s.
v2 indicates mount options=v2
v3 indicates mount options=v3
v3+ indicates mount options=v3 and Trond's nfs-all patch applied
On tri, which is the referred SIS530 box, as you can see, for most runs
the CPU usage is just so much higher than minas, which has practically
the same setup: K6-500, old PCI (no AGP) board, eepro100 card. I'm
wondering if anybody has seen something like this before?
The server is a K7 with 2 3c905-TXM cards that is serving all other
boxes with no problems reported (beyond some lockd quirks I'm trying to
get my head around).
I've tried applying Trond's patches, using pci=biosirq and other tweaks,
but nothing has really made it better. Any idea what's going on?
Crossposting to reach the appropriate parties as I feel its quite a
cross-subject issue.
Take care,
--
Christian Reis, Senior Engineer, Async Open Source, Brazil.
http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331 | NMFL
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>>>>> " " == Christian Reis <[email protected]> writes:
> Helle there,
> I've been, for the past days, setting up a fairly big diskless
> network based on Linux. I've chosen to use 2.4.19 as the kernel
> because there were some hardware requirements, and for most of
> the newer boxes, it runs fine. However, for three of the older
> boxes, we have had some pretty odd performance and stability
> issues. This message is about the latest one, which is an ASUS
> P5S-B (has the infamous SIS 530 chipset) on an intel eepro100
> card. Details:
Is all this NFS over UDP? If so, numbers should not really have
changed in 2.4.19 ( - yes my patchset changes things, but stock 2.4.19
should not be too different w.r.t 2.4.18)
Are you able to determine where in the 2.4.19-pre series the
performance dies?
Cheers,
Trond
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On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 03:13:55AM +0200, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> >>>>> " " == Christian Reis <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > Helle there,
>
> > I've been, for the past days, setting up a fairly big diskless
> > network based on Linux. I've chosen to use 2.4.19 as the kernel
> > because there were some hardware requirements, and for most of
> > the newer boxes, it runs fine. However, for three of the older
> > boxes, we have had some pretty odd performance and stability
> > issues. This message is about the latest one, which is an ASUS
> > P5S-B (has the infamous SIS 530 chipset) on an intel eepro100
> > card. Details:
>
> Is all this NFS over UDP? If so, numbers should not really have
> changed in 2.4.19 ( - yes my patchset changes things, but stock 2.4.19
> should not be too different w.r.t 2.4.18)
>
> Are you able to determine where in the 2.4.19-pre series the
> performance dies?
Yes, it is over UDP. (Should I try TCP?)
Well, to be honest, I just set the network up, and I only tried two
kernels: 2.4.19 kosher and 2.4.19 with nfs-all. I haven't experimented
swapping kernels because I've been a bit singleminded that it's
something to do with the hardware setup.
I can try using an older kernel to see if it helps. 2.4.18 is a good
idea? Let me try and I'll post you back.
(BTW: Your patches *do* solve a problem I have: it makes client nfs
locking actually work; before them I had some serious issues with
locking under high network load. Not anymore. The flock() patch is also
essential for running sendmail on the diskless stations --- before it I
was forced to use tmpfs for /var/spool/mqueue.)
Take care,
--
Christian Reis, Senior Engineer, Async Open Source, Brazil.
http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331 | NMFL
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