Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Chris Bacott]

What is the card? Are they still using the SiS 530? I have a Presario, with 
192 meg RAM, and a SiS 530 onboard, using 8 meg shared mem. I have no 
problems concerning that, Linux se---hmm, never noticed before. Total mem 
(-swap): 183.2 meg. Doesn't say anything about the shared mem. I thought 
Linux totalled up all RAM, even that in the vid card, to be used as RAM? 
Someone told me that.....can't remember who. Never noticed that. Anyway, I'm 
not having any other problems, other than now I have to make sure the missing 
8 meg, err, 9meg, is being used. Dammit, something _else_ to investigate.

> Got an idea - the video card in the Compaq uses a piece of shared memory
> (between 2-8M).
>
> Would Linux be able to detect that?
>
> Daniel.
>
> >
> > At last getting something different!
> >
> > linux 2.4.5 with:
> >
> > no options - slow
> > mem=64M - fast
> > mem=128M - fast
> > mem=200M - fast
> > mem=224M - fast
> > mem=240M - fast
> > mem=248M - fast
> > mem=249M - fast/medium, fast 'make dep' but slow boot/reboot
> > mem=250M - slow
> > mem=252M - slow
> > mem=256M - hangs on boot, last line="Freeing unused kernel
> > memory: 196k freed"
> >

-- 
Chris Bacott

RE: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Daniel Harvey]

At last getting something different!

linux 2.4.5 with:

no options - slow
mem=64M - fast
mem=128M - fast
mem=200M - fast
mem=224M - fast
mem=240M - fast
mem=248M - fast
mem=249M - fast/medium, fast 'make dep' but slow boot/reboot
mem=250M - slow
mem=252M - slow
mem=256M - hangs on boot, last line="Freeing unused kernel memory: 196k
freed"


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Wedgwood [mailto:cw@f00f.org]
> Sent: Thursday, 12 July 2001 11:48 AM
> To: Daniel Harvey
> Subject: Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 11:48:31AM +0800, Daniel Harvey wrote:
>
>     That's the weird thing - 2.4.5 is just as slow! Even though,
> as you say, it
>     has the patch etc incorporated ...
>
> boot 2.4.5 with the command line optino "mem=64M" and see how slow it is
>
>
>
>   --cw
>

RE: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Daniel Harvey]

Got an idea - the video card in the Compaq uses a piece of shared memory
(between 2-8M).

Would Linux be able to detect that?

Daniel.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Harvey [mailto:daniel@amristar.com.au]
> Sent: Thursday, 12 July 2001 12:43 PM
> To: Chris Wedgwood; Mark Hahn [hahn@coffee.psychology.mcmaster.ca];
> linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep
>
>
> At last getting something different!
>
> linux 2.4.5 with:
>
> no options - slow
> mem=64M - fast
> mem=128M - fast
> mem=200M - fast
> mem=224M - fast
> mem=240M - fast
> mem=248M - fast
> mem=249M - fast/medium, fast 'make dep' but slow boot/reboot
> mem=250M - slow
> mem=252M - slow
> mem=256M - hangs on boot, last line="Freeing unused kernel
> memory: 196k freed"
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Wedgwood [mailto:cw@f00f.org]
> > Sent: Thursday, 12 July 2001 11:48 AM
> > To: Daniel Harvey
> > Subject: Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 11:48:31AM +0800, Daniel Harvey wrote:
> >
> >     That's the weird thing - 2.4.5 is just as slow! Even though,
> > as you say, it
> >     has the patch etc incorporated ...
> >
> > boot 2.4.5 with the command line optino "mem=64M" and see how slow it is
> >
> >
> >
> >   --cw
> >

Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Chris Wedgwood]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 12:48:57PM +0800, Daniel Harvey wrote:
    Got an idea - the video card in the Compaq uses a piece of shared memory
    (between 2-8M).
    
    Would Linux be able to detect that?

the bios returns a memory value to accommodate this



  --cw

RE: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Daniel Harvey]

Its a Trident Cyberblade; here is what X reports:

...
(II) TRIDENT: driver for Trident chipsets: tvga8900d, cyber9320, cyber9388,
        cyber9397, cyber9397dvd, cyber9520, cyber9525dvd, cyberblade/e4,
        tgui9420dgi, tgui9440agi, tgui9660, tgui9680, providia9682,
        providia9685, cyber9382, cyber9385, 3dimage975, 3dimage985, blade3d,
        cyberbladei7, cyberbladei7d, cyberbladei1, cyberbladei1d,
        cyberbladeAi1, cyberbladeAi1d, cyberbladeXP, cyberbladeXPm
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(--) Chipset cyberbladei1d found
...
(--) TRIDENT(0): Found CyberBlade/DSTN/i1 chip
(--) TRIDENT(0): RAM type is SDRAM
(**) TRIDENT(0): VideoRAM: 4096 kByte

Daniel.

> What is the card? Are they still using the SiS 530? I have a
> Presario, with

Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[J . A . Magallon]

On 20010712 Daniel Harvey wrote:
>Got an idea - the video card in the Compaq uses a piece of shared memory
>(between 2-8M).
>
>Would Linux be able to detect that?
>

The bios just tells linux it has less ram. I have a laptop with all SiS chips,
vga is a SiS630, and uses 8Mb added to its own 8Mb. Linux just thinks it has
120Mb of ram.

>> mem=250M - slow
>> mem=252M - slow
>> mem=256M - hangs on boot,

Do not know why it is slow, but it hangs because it is trying to use reserved video
mem.

-- 
J.A. Magallon                           #  Let the source be with you...        
mailto:jamagallon@able.es
Mandrake Linux release 8.1 (Cooker) for i586
Linux werewolf 2.4.6-ac2 #1 SMP Sun Jul 8 23:57:11 CEST 2001 i686

Re: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Chris Wedgwood]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 01:57:17PM +0800, Daniel Harvey wrote:

     BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)

0 -> 638K

     BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)

638K -> 640K

        presumably you loose 2k at the top because the bios is doing
        something with it

     BIOS-e820: 00000000000ea000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

936K -> 1024K / 1M

        more reserved stuff

     BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fbf0000 (usable)

1M -> ~ 251M (256M less 4160K)

     BIOS-e820: 000000000fbf0000 - 000000000fbffc00 (ACPI data)
     BIOS-e820: 000000000fbffc00 - 000000000fc00000 (ACPI NVS)

ACPI stuff

     BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

4G - 128M -> 4G


I'm not sure where above the video memory resides, probably in the
last usable section looking at the size of it, but I don't see why it
should be marked as usable then.  Also, if it was being misreported, I
would expect running X and such like to clobber kernel buffers
eventually and cause all sorts of nasties (like disk corruption).

Was does lspci -v report for the video (VGA Adapters) address? You
might also be able to find this from the XF86 startup session.

Also, can you try adding a line like:

        mempages >>= 1;

to the start of fs/dcache.c:dcache_init(...) after the variable
delcaration obviously and see if that helps at all?





  --cw

RE: FW: UPDATE: Linux SLOW on Compaq Armada 110 PIII Speedstep

[Daniel Harvey]

Here it is:

Linux version 2.4.5 (root@elvandar) (gcc version 2.95.4 20010703 (Debian
prerelease)) #1 Tue Jul 10 03:09:36 WST 2001
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000ea000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fbf0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000fbf0000 - 000000000fbffc00 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000fbffc00 - 000000000fc00000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

Thanks,
Daniel.

> > the bios returns a memory value to accommodate this
>
> The BIOS /should/.  Perhaps that's the problem.  Daniel, can you send a
> copy of your BIOS memory map (reported by Linux during boot) to myself
> and the list?