(Bob; let me encourage you to keep conversations on the list rather than
private replies; this way, others who might be helpful can help; and
others who are looking for the same answers can find the answers both on
the list and later in the archives.)
Bob Hynes wrote:
Kent West wrote:
Bob Hynes reports a slow Debian setup.
My first suspicion would be that DMA is not turned on. What's the
results of running "hdparm /dev/hda" (assuming your setup is
installed on /dev/hda)?
Well, I ran that command on konsole, but got "no such file or
directory. I did install it earlier, so I know it's there. When I run
"hdparm" I get a bunch of switch options, so it's installed.
The only explanation I might have is that when you got the "no such file
or directory", you did it as a non-root user, whereas you ran it as root
when you got the switch options. Or perhaps you misspelled hdparm the
first time. Or /sbin is not in your path. Or you were in the /sbin
directory the first time, in which case you would have wanted to type
"./hdparm /dev/hda".
Can't say I know the file structure or the KDE interface well enough
right now to know where something gets install by default, or where
hdparm got installed, but if the command responds with a list of
switches, I'm assuming there is something I can do without running it
with the /dev/hda path.
"locate hdparm" (or "locate [whatever]") is a handy tool to use for
locating a file.
"which hdparm" should find the first executable instance of hdparm. (If
you have more than one copy in different locations, the command travels
down your PATH setting until it finds an executable copy. The file must
be executable (permissions, path settings, etc) by the same user that is
running the "which" command, or you'll get different results.)
(Interestingly enough, the file "hda" exists at that directory level
as a "0 B" file...not sure how big the file is supposed to be.)
Like so:
nesa[westk]:/home/westk/Desktop> ls -l /dev/hda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 Jul 30 2004 /dev/hda
The "/dev/hda" file you've found is a "device file", reffering to a
"block" device; that's what the "b" means at the start of the line. This
type of device file refers to something like a hard drive or a cdrom
drive or something else that moves data in blocks. Items that move data
in single "characters" at a time, like a modem, would have a "c" at the
start of the line. "d" means directory; "-" means normal file; "l" means
link; etc.
In *nix, "everything is a file". What this means in this context is that
when your system accesses your hard drive, it's really doing so through
this device file.
But back to your issue. You can try "/sbin/hdparm /dev/hda" instead of
"hdparm /dev/hda"; this will specify the path to the hdparm utility.
The "mount" command should result in something like this:
nesa[westk]:/home/westk/Desktop> mount
/dev/hda8 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/hda9 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /var type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda7 on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /tmp type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda5 on /spare type ext3 (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
This indicates that my system is installed to /dev/hda. If you had your
system spread over several drives (which you'd have a hard time doing in
Windows - wow, that's a lame OS in many ways), you might see references
to /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc, etc. In fact, your CDROM is likely on /dev/hdc.
If you have a SCSI system instead of an IDE system (not likely for your
average Dell or Gateway or locally-built whitebox computer), you might
see things like /dev/sda or /dev/sdb. This might also be the case if you
mounted a USB keyfob or camera, etc, as they often are mounted as a
"simulated" SCSI device.
hda refers to the master drive on the first IDE port of your mother board;
hdb refers to the slave on the first IDE port.
hdc refers to the master on the second IDE port;
hdd refers to the slave on the second IDE port.
A number after these designations refers to the partition. Most newbies
probably only have one big partition instead of multiple partitions like
I have above, so you might only see something like "/dev/hda1 on /".
If your system says something other than /dev/hda for most of your
mounts, then your "hdparm" command needs to refer to that (those?)
drive(s) instead of /dev/hda. And remember, hdparm works on drives
(hda), not partitions (hda1).