Hi, I have a problem which doesn't seem to be connected to the i/o schedulers, because all I tested (cfq, deadline, noop) show the same: While writing (when the kernel actually commits to hd) my system gets very unresponsive esp when another app I want to use wants to write (read?) from hd, as well. This is *not* a UDMA problem (at least no apparent...)! More specific: I wrote this primitive code for writing sequentially: #include #include int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int it,i; FILE *outf; char *buf; if (argc<2) it=10; else it=atoi(argv[1]); printf("it: %i\n",it); buf=malloc(1024*1024); outf=fopen("tttt.out","wb"); for (i=0;i/dev/null) deleting messages and things like that are only a little bit slower than when the system is idle. So no trouble here. I would expect this behaviour in the writing case, as well... I haven't tested whether it is ReiserFS fault, as this is the fs I am using. I have done a quick test with kernel 2.6.8.1 and this one shows the same behaviour. I don't know whether it is libata related, as I haven't tried the siimage ide driver. Following a hunk of infos. If you need more, just ask. (Usually I use cfq, the dmesg shows the one when I tried noop.) Cheers, Prakash If some fields are empty or look unusual you may have an old version. Compare to the current minimal requirements in Documentation/Changes. Linux tachyon 2.6.10-rc1-bk17 #10 Mon Nov 8 22:11:17 CET 2004 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux Gnu C 3.4.3 Gnu make 3.80 binutils 2.15.92.0.2 util-linux 2.12b mount 2.12b module-init-tools 3.0 e2fsprogs 1.35 jfsutils 1.1.7 reiserfsprogs 3.6.19 reiser4progs 1.0.2 nfs-utils 1.0.6 Linux C Library 2.3.4 Dynamic linker (ldd) 2.3.4 Procps 3.2.4 Net-tools 1.60 Kbd 1.12 Sh-utils 5.2.1 Modules Loaded nvidia nvidia_agp agpgart Linux version 2.6.10-rc1-bk17 (root@tachyon) (gcc-Version 3.4.3 (Gentoo Linux 3.4.3, ssp-3.4.3-0, pie-8.7.6.6)) #10 Mon Nov 8 22:11:17 CET 2004 processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 8 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2205.173 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse pni syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow bogomips : 4358.14 nvidia 3460860 12 - Live 0xf8eba000 nvidia_agp 5468 1 - Live 0xf89f8000 agpgart 26536 2 nvidia_agp, Live 0xf89fe000 0000-001f : dma1 0020-0021 : pic1 0040-0043 : timer0 0050-0053 : timer1 0060-006f : keyboard 0070-0077 : rtc 0080-008f : dma page reg 00a0-00a1 : pic2 00c0-00df : dma2 00f0-00ff : fpu 0170-0177 : ide1 0290-0297 : w83627hf 0376-0376 : ide1 03c0-03df : vga+ 0cf8-0cff : PCI conf1 4000-407f : motherboard 4000-4003 : PM1a_EVT_BLK 4004-4005 : PM1a_CNT_BLK 4008-400b : PM_TMR 4020-4027 : GPE0_BLK 4080-40ff : motherboard 4200-427f : motherboard 4280-42ff : motherboard 4400-447f : motherboard 4480-44ff : motherboard 44a0-44af : GPE1_BLK 5000-503f : motherboard 5000-5007 : nForce2 SMBus 5100-513f : motherboard 5100-5107 : nForce2 SMBus 9000-afff : PCI Bus #01 9000-901f : 0000:01:08.0 9000-901f : SkyStar2 9400-9407 : 0000:01:0b.0 9400-9407 : sata_sil 9800-9803 : 0000:01:0b.0 9800-9803 : sata_sil 9c00-9c07 : 0000:01:0b.0 9c00-9c07 : sata_sil a000-a003 : 0000:01:0b.0 a000-a003 : sata_sil a400-a40f : 0000:01:0b.0 a400-a40f : sata_sil b000-b007 : 0000:00:04.0 b000-b007 : forcedeth b400-b4ff : 0000:00:06.0 b400-b4ff : NVidia nForce2 b800-b87f : 0000:00:06.0 b800-b87f : NVidia nForce2 c400-c41f : 0000:00:01.1 f000-f00f : 0000:00:09.0 f000-f007 : ide0 f008-f00f : ide1 00000000-0009f3ff : System RAM 0009f400-0009ffff : reserved 000a0000-000bffff : Video RAM area 000c0000-000cebff : Video ROM 000d0000-000d47ff : Adapter ROM 000f0000-000fffff : System ROM 00100000-3ffeffff : System RAM 00100000-00382857 : Kernel code 00382858-0048033f : Kernel data 3fff0000-3fff2fff : ACPI Non-volatile Storage 3fff3000-3fffffff : ACPI Tables a0000000-bfffffff : 0000:00:00.0 c0000000-c7ffffff : PCI Bus #02 c0000000-c7ffffff : 0000:02:00.0 c8000000-c9ffffff : PCI Bus #02 c8000000-c8ffffff : 0000:02:00.0 c8000000-c8ffffff : nvidia ca000000-cbffffff : PCI Bus #01 cb000000-cb00ffff : 0000:01:08.0 cb000000-cb00ffff : SkyStar2 cb010000-cb0101ff : 0000:01:0b.0 cb010000-cb0101ff : sata_sil cc000000-cc07ffff : 0000:00:05.0 cc080000-cc080fff : 0000:00:02.0 cc080000-cc080fff : ohci_hcd cc081000-cc081fff : 0000:00:06.0 cc081000-cc081fff : NVidia nForce2 cc083000-cc083fff : 0000:00:02.1 cc083000-cc083fff : ohci_hcd cc084000-cc0847ff : 0000:00:0d.0 cc085000-cc08503f : 0000:00:0d.0 cc086000-cc0860ff : 0000:00:02.2 cc087000-cc087fff : 0000:00:04.0 cc087000-cc087fff : forcedeth fec00000-fec00fff : reserved fee00000-fee00fff : reserved ffff0000-ffffffff : reserved Attached devices: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: ATA Model: SAMSUNG SP1614N Rev: TM10 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1) Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1c00 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- Reset- FastB2B- 0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP]) Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1c00 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- Reset- FastB2B- 0000:01:08.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 01) Subsystem: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- Status: Cap- 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- TAbort- SERR- GSI 23 (level, high) -> IRQ 23 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCF] enabled at IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCG] enabled at IRQ 21 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.1[B] -> GSI 21 (level, high) -> IRQ 21 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCL] enabled at IRQ 20 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.2[C] -> GSI 20 (level, high) -> IRQ 20 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCH] enabled at IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:04.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCI] enabled at IRQ 21 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:05.0[A] -> GSI 21 (level, high) -> IRQ 21 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCJ] enabled at IRQ 20 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:06.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, high) -> IRQ 20 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APCM] enabled at IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:0d.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 22 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC1] enabled at IRQ 16 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:08.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, high) -> IRQ 16 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC3] enabled at IRQ 18 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:0b.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, high) -> IRQ 18 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC4] enabled at IRQ 19 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, high) -> IRQ 19 Machine check exception polling timer started. cpufreq: Detected nForce2 chipset revision C1 cpufreq: FSB changing is maybe unstable and can lead to crashes and data loss. IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.14 Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de). NTFS driver 2.1.21 [Flags: R/O]. pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5 fakephp: Fake PCI Hot Plug Controller Driver acpiphp: ACPI Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4 ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF] ACPI: Fan [FAN] (on) ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports C1) ACPI: Thermal Zone [THRM] (41 C) Real Time Clock Driver v1.12 Non-volatile memory driver v1.2 serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1 io scheduler noop registered io scheduler anticipatory registered io scheduler deadline registered io scheduler cfq registered Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077 loop: loaded (max 8 devices) forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.30. ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:04.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 22 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:04.0 to 64 eth0: forcedeth.c: subsystem: 0147b:1c00 bound to 0000:00:04.0 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:08.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, high) -> IRQ 16 drivers/media/dvb/b2c2/skystar2.c: FlexCopII(rev.130) chip found drivers/media/dvb/b2c2/skystar2.c: the chip has 6 hardware filters DVB: registering new adapter (SkyStar2). DVB: registering frontend 0 (Zarlink MT312)... Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2 ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx NFORCE2: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:09.0 NFORCE2: chipset revision 162 NFORCE2: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later NFORCE2: 0000:00:09.0 (rev a2) UDMA133 controller ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA Probing IDE interface ide0... Probing IDE interface ide1... hdc: NU DVDRW DDW-081, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 hdc: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33) Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide libata version 1.02 loaded. sata_sil version 0.54 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:0b.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, high) -> IRQ 18 ata1: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xF8806080 ctl 0xF880608A bmdma 0xF8806000 irq 18 ata2: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xF88060C0 ctl 0xF88060CA bmdma 0xF8806008 irq 18 ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c69 86:3c01 87:4003 88:203f ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/100, 312581808 sectors: lba48 ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/100 scsi0 : sata_sil ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000) scsi1 : sata_sil Vendor: ATA Model: SAMSUNG SP1614N Rev: TM10 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB) SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 < sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 > Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0 ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI) ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, high) -> IRQ 22 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.0 to 64 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: irq 22, pci mem 0xcc080000 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 1-0:1.0: 3 ports detected ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.1[B] -> GSI 21 (level, high) -> IRQ 21 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.1: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (#2) PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.1 to 64 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.1: irq 21, pci mem 0xcc083000 ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 2-0:1.0: 3 ports detected usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2 drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 2 if 0 alt 1 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x1004 usbcore: registered new driver usblp drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: v0.13: USB Printer Device Class driver Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage USB Mass Storage support registered. mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0 input: ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse on isa0060/serio1 I2O Core - (C) Copyright 1999 Red Hat Software i2o: max_drivers=4 I2O configuration manager v 0.04. (C) Copyright 1999 Red Hat Software i2c /dev entries driver mt312_read: ret == -38 mt312_read: ret == -38 i2c_adapter i2c-2: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x5000 mt312_read: ret == -38 i2c_adapter i2c-3: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x5100 flexcop_i2c_func flexcop_i2c_func Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.6 (Sun Aug 15 07:17:53 2004 UTC). ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:06.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, high) -> IRQ 20 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:06.0 to 64 intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 49646 usecs intel8x0: clocking to 47502 ALSA device list: #0: NVidia nForce2 with ALC650F at 0xcc081000, irq 20 NET: Registered protocol family 2 IP: routing cache hash table of 8192 buckets, 64Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536) NET: Registered protocol family 1 NET: Registered protocol family 17 ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S4 S5) ACPI wakeup devices: HUB0 HUB1 USB0 USB1 USB2 F139 MMAC MMCI UAR1 ReiserFS: sda6: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal ReiserFS: sda6: using ordered data mode ReiserFS: sda6: journal params: device sda6, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30 ReiserFS: sda6: checking transaction log (sda6) ReiserFS: sda6: Using r5 hash to sort names VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 148k freed Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones agpgart: Detected NVIDIA nForce2 chipset agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 816M agpgart: AGP aperture is 512M @ 0xa0000000 nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, high) -> IRQ 19 NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-6629 Wed Nov 3 13:12:51 PST 2004 ReiserFS: sda5: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal ReiserFS: sda5: using ordered data mode ReiserFS: sda5: journal params: device sda5, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30 ReiserFS: sda5: checking transaction log (sda5) ReiserFS: sda5: Using r5 hash to sort names NTFS volume version 3.1. NTFS volume version 3.1. agpgart: Found an AGP 3.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0. agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 8x mode agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:02:00.0 into 8x mode agpgart: Found an AGP 3.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0. agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 8x mode agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:02:00.0 into 8x mode