Re: Verified IDE performance issues in kernels newer than 2.4.20

[Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 02:31:10AM +0300, K. Hampf wrote:
> BRIEF:
> I discovered the 2.4.21 and  2.4.22 kernels give me roughly 15% of the 
> troughput compared to 2.4.20. Anyone working on this?

out of the blue, the following info could be very useful ...
(for 2.4.20 and 2.4.22 on your systems)

cat /proc/ide/*
hdparm -i /dev/hd?
hdparm /dev/hd?

and try to make it available on a webpage

best,
Herbert

> Dear Sirs!
> 
> I could not find any info about this issue that indicated you were aware of 
> this issue. So I decided to send you a report. I've confirmed the issue on 
> different i386 chipsets so I think it's a valid issue. Tried to mail the 
> maintaners bug-report e-mail (bugs@linux-ide.org) but failed on delivery, 
> "User unknown".
> 
> I'm a bit into tweaking kernels and I've made a discovery explaining getting 
> poor performance in ATA transfers. Both experienced by using apps and with 
> "hdparm -t -T" runs.
> 
> I verified this under my VIA KT333 and a SiS 735 (SiS 5513IDE) chipsets. The 
> first on my Debian testing/unstable workstation, the latter on a 
> Debian/stable. It's not debian-kernel specific as I use both "vanilla" stable 
> kernel sources and debian sources, I know that I'm on to something.
> 
> I have no time to push the 2.4.20 IDE driver tree into 2.4.22 (tried quickly 
> but the include headers break and it would take some time for me to make it 
> work), I could however, if you take this bugreport seriously and make it 
> meaningful, do some runs on vanilla 2.4.20 and 2.4.22 kernels with hdparm and 
> send all results. All you need is to tell me. I will be able to test it on a 
> newer P4 SATA system too if that's supported when I get to it.
> 
> I know this is not a proper nor well formatted bugreport but I could find no 
> info on wether you knew of this performance issue already and are working on 
> it, I'll throw you some extra info just to make you happy:
> 
> Both test systems are Athlon architectures (T-bird 1.2GHz and an XP2100+). 
> I've confirmed the issue on different IDE chipsets and on both ATA66, ATA100 
> and ATA133 drives. I'm experienced with linux and hardware and know I'm not 
> ranting about some "might be" issue. I'm preparing my local LUG to test this 
> out a bit more, hopefully on other architectures than i386 also (SPARC and 
> Alpha I hope).
> 
> If this is relevant to your work on the IDE driver (as I can't get in touch 
> with you guys directly) or you might think it's about some PCI issues or 
> other things, do not hesitate to contact me, I can include statistics and do 
> better testruns if you tell me it would be of any value to you and that you 
> are the ones to handle it.
> 
> Best Regards,
> K. Hampf <khampf@users.sourceforge.net>
> 
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