On a brand new install of a Debian-based distro (Kubuntu 8.04) the CPU
load is very high. I see the disk light on almost all the time, and
simple maneuvers such as right click drag the system to a halt. In the
KDE system guard I see that the CPU load soars at time like these.
Memory usage seems to be fine. The two disk partions (one for / and
one for /home) are both at 60%. I looked in ksystem log for anything
unusual, but I saw nothing alarming. Previous versions of Ubuntu and
Fedora have run fine on this machine. Where should I begin
troubleshooting?

Thanks in advance.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

On Sun, 2008-04-27 at 18:25 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Where should I begin troubleshooting?

Run "top" and check for processes waiting to do I/O on disks.
Also, check your hdparm settings since having DMA/UDMA disables makes
reads A LOT slower

Andrea


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2008/4/28 Andrea Gozzi <as.gozzi@vp44.net>:
> On Sun, 2008-04-27 at 18:25 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > Where should I begin troubleshooting?
>
> Run "top" and check for processes waiting to do I/O on disks.
> Also, check your hdparm settings since having DMA/UDMA disables makes
> reads A LOT slower
>
> Andrea
>

Thanks. Top doesn't show anything excessive, and it looks like DMA is
the culprit:

hardy@hardy-laptop:~$ sudo hdparm /dev/sda
[sudo] password for hardy:

/dev/sda:
IO_support = 0 (default)
16-bit)
HDIO_GET_UNMASKINTR failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_KEEPSETTINGS failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 9729/255/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0
hardy@hardy-laptop:~$ sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
hardy@hardy-laptop:~$ sudo hdparm /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
IO_support = 0 (default)
16-bit)
HDIO_GET_UNMASKINTR failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_KEEPSETTINGS failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 9729/255/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0
hardy@hardy-laptop:~$


What can I do to remedy that?

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 01:01 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> 2008/4/28 Andrea Gozzi <as.gozzi@vp44.net>:
> > On Sun, 2008-04-27 at 18:25 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > > Where should I begin troubleshooting?
> >
> > Run "top" and check for processes waiting to do I/O on disks.
> > Also, check your hdparm settings since having DMA/UDMA disables makes
> > reads A LOT slower
> >
> > Andrea
> >
>
> Thanks. Top doesn't show anything excessive, and it looks like DMA is
> the culprit:
>
> What can I do to remedy that?

This should help:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdparm_to_improve_IDE_device_performance

Andrea



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2008/4/28 Andrea Gozzi <as.gozzi@vp44.net>:
> This should help:
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdparm_to_improve_IDE_device_performance
>

Thanks. That's quite a read, and parts seems to be Gentoo specific,
but I'll see what I can come away with it.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 06:25:00PM +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On a brand new install of a Debian-based distro (Kubuntu 8.04) the CPU
> load is very high.
> ...

A long time ago, I think it was in woody, the kde sound daemon did
something like this on my laptop. I decided to not use it and that
was that. What does top show? Or does the culprit not show up there?

A.


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Looks like I've got to learn to compile a kernel...

Dotan Cohen

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Hi,

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:

> Thanks. Top doesn't show anything excessive, and it looks like DMA is
> the culprit:
>
> hardy@hardy-laptop:~$ sudo hdparm /dev/sda
> [sudo] password for hardy:
>
> /dev/sda:
> IO_support = 0 (default)
> 16-bit)
> HDIO_GET_UNMASKINTR failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
> HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
> HDIO_GET_KEEPSETTINGS failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
> readonly = 0 (off)
> readahead = 256 (on)
> geometry = 9729/255/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0

thats nothing unusual because the disk is sata.
i don't believe its dma

> What can I do to remedy that?

boot in single user and look if the problem is there also.
-> if it is, its a kernel problem

--
Florian Reitmeir


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2008/4/28 Florian Reitmeir <florian@reitmeir.org>:
> > What can I do to remedy that?
>
> boot in single user and look if the problem is there also.
> -> if it is, its a kernel problem

Thanks, Florian. Do you mean the 'safe mode' from grub? If I remember
correctly I can then start a gui with 'startx' in that mode. Is this
what you mean that I should do?

Dotan Cohen

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

On 29/04/2008, sa9k063 <spam.spam@hfbk-hamburg.de> wrote:
>
> pardon, the reply was meant to be sent to the list. i guess a simple renice
> would do it in this case.
> trackerd's priority could be set from the prefs, kontact can be started
> with
> nice kontact
>

Thanks, Tee. I've heard of nice but never used it. I'll give it a try.

I found the problem, as the high CPU load is only with Kontact open.
Somehow my kaddressbook's vcf file got base64 encoded! It still works,
but is killing the system. Luckily, I have a backup from only two days
ago. I'll still loose a bit of info, but most of the important stuff I
can recreate from memory and the Thunderbird trash bin.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?