Re: How to make apps play nice?

[Craig Hagerman <craighagerman@gmail.com>]

I finally have the conclusion to my problem. (that some apps like find
take up almost all the CPU.) The responses were correct - DMA was not
enabled on my system. I just finished compiling and installing a new
kernel. Now, with DMA enabled, and activated on /dev/hda there is no
longer a problem.

For anyone else interested, my motherboard is an ASUS A8V
lspci reports that the IDE interface is:
IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)

When compiling a new kernel, the relevant bit is in:

Device Drivers > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support > VIA82CXX chipset support

Say "yes", recompile etc... After rebooting into the new kernel run:

% hdparm -d1 /dev/hda
Then check it out with
% hdparm /dev/hda
% hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

Cheers,

Craig