Re: [OT] Moving away from KDE to what?

[Dan Owens <mtn@redmeadow.com>]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Sandip P Deshmukh wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 06:46:46AM -0700, Dan Owens wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Chip Rose wrote:
> >
> > Another thing you might want to check is if your hard drive needs dma
> > turned on.  What speed does "hdparm -t /dev/hda" give you?
>
> /dev/hda:
>  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 18.06 seconds =  3.54 MB/sec
>
> do i need to turn dma on?
>
> >  Most of the
> > debian kernels don't have dma turned on and will give very poor perfomance
> > with data transfers, starting programs, etc.  Windows turns dma on by
> > defualt.
>
> and how do i turn it on? once turned on, will it always remain turned
> on or will i have to turn on?

Yes, you probably need to turn it on.  There are two basic ways to
accomplish this.  One is to use a kernel with dma and ultradma turned on.
You can compile your own or upgrade to a debian kernel that does this
(2.4.19, as far as I know) or you can use a script to turn it on at boot
time with hdparm.

To use the script method you would do something like this.  Make a file in
etc/init.d called hdparm.  Put this in the file and make the file
executable:

#!/bin/sh
# Script written by me to configure hard drives during boot.
hdparm -X66 -d1  /dev/hda
hdparm -X66 -d1  /dev/hdb
hdparm -X34 -d1 /dev/hdd
echo "hdparm updated"

This script turns on ultra dma for both hard drives and dma for the cdrom.
Of course your situation might be different.

Then you need to make symbolic links to this file from the appropriate
rc*.d files in /etc.  For instance, cd into /etc/rc2.d and run this
command:

ln -s /etc/init.d/hdparm S22hdparm

The S22 must be a different number than any of the other files in the
rc*.d directory and this is the number I use, not the one you have to use.
Do this in rc3, rc4 and rc5 and the next time you boot, your performance
should be much improved.

Please make sure to read the man pages for hdparm, as I am not an expert
in hard drive optimization.  The hdparm readme (/usr/share/doc/hdparm)
also mentions using -c for best perfomance, but I haven't tried that.


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Dan Owens mtn@redmeadow.com Bigfork, MT.
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