Bug#444271: Slow hard drive performance on IOP32x (ARM)

[Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>]

Package: linux-2.6
Version: 2.6.18.dfsg.1-12
Severity: important

Several users of Debian on Thecus N2100 have reported (see [1] and
[2]) that their hard drive performance goes down significantly after
moving from the original firmware to Debian.

It goes from something like:

| Timing cached reads: 424 MB in 2.00 seconds = 212.00 MB/sec
| Timing buffered disk reads: 158 MB in 3.01 seconds = 52.49 MB/sec

down to:

| Timing cached reads: 60 MB in 2.00 seconds = 29.95 MB/sec
| Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.07 seconds = 19.53 MB/sec

This also happens with 2.6.23.

I found that Intel has some patches for the DMA engine that are
required to get the original speed.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2007/09/msg00088.html
[2] http://thecususergroup.proboards106.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=modifications&thread=1186052573
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/