Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Hi, I'm dual booting windows XP and mandrake 9 (figured I'd try it out). I've noticed that windows xp is much, much faster than linux. I timed it, and like kmail for example takes around 6 seconds to finally load. Mozilla takes a good 15 seconds. I'm guessing that I'm doing something wrong...since I don't really know what i'm doing, ha. I have an athlon xp 1800+ processor, asus a7v-266e mobo, 512 megs 266 mhz ram, etc...so it's not that slow of a machine. I have two hard drives, that I believe are pretty much the same speed (typical 7200 RPM speeds). I have windows on the master drive and linux on the slave drive. I realize running kde is not the fastest way to do things, but is there something I can change to make it faster? There are two things that I suspect may be part of the problem: 1) How I have everything hooked up. For my IDE stuff....the motherboard has 4 slots. It has a primary, a secondary, and "promise" IDE1 and IDE2. I have both my hard drives hooked up to the primary slot, with the windows drive set to master and the linux drive set to slave...and my cd-rw hooked up to the secondary slot, and my dvd drive hooked to promise ide1. Is there a better way to do that? 2) My partitioning...I have two windows partitions on my windows drive. On the linux drive, I have a 10 gig root partition, a 350 meg linux swap partition, and a 46 gig FAT partition that I use for both OS's. I notice that everyone seems to have a whole bunch of linux partitions...which I don't really understand the purpose for. So basically...any ideas for things that'll speed this up? Thanks a lot for any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 I assume you are using a Promise PCI card for additional ide ports. I used the Promise Ultra 100 controller with Md 8.2 and had similar problems with slow performance but have had no problems with Md 9.0. Post back what card you are using and if, in fact, you have a PCI add in controller. I have a few ideas but don't want to get into it if my assumptions are wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 You could check whether DMA access has been enabled in Linux. DMA can speed things up quite a bit. Also check whats running in the background, the more thats running the slower your system. So for instance if your not browsing a network very often theres no reason to have lisa and sambe running. As to Mozilla, that may have something to do with pre-loading. Mozilla and IE both pre-load some things into memory in Windows. This makes them load aster, but takes up more memory when they are not running. If your running KDE, konqueror will give you a better comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 You could check whether DMA access has been enabled in Linux. DMA can speed things up quite a bit. Also check whats running in the background, the more thats running the slower your system. So for instance if your not browsing a network very often theres no reason to have lisa and sambe running. How do I check if DMA is enabled? Do I do that for both drives? As to Mozilla, that may have something to do with pre-loading. Mozilla and IE both pre-load some things into memory in Windows. This makes them load aster, but takes up more memory when they are not running. If your running KDE, konqueror will give you a better comparison. Yeah, I've stopped using mozilla...konqueror takes a few seconds too though. Is it supposed to take longer than IE in windows? I assume you are using a Promise PCI card for additional ide ports. I used the Promise Ultra 100 controller with Md 8.2 and had similar problems with slow performance but have had no problems with Md 9.0. Post back what card you are using and if, in fact, you have a PCI add in controller. I have a few ideas but don't want to get into it if my assumptions are wrong. No, no pci card....the motherboard already has those four ports on it... Thanks for the help guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 So the fact that I have both hard drives on the same port and linux is running off of the slave isn't a problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 To check for dma you can install a program called hdparm which is on the install disks but is not installed by default. Open Mandrake Control Center(mcc) by either going to it in the kde menu>Configuration or opening a console and running the following: $ su <Enter> $<root password> <Enter> # mcc <Enter> Go to Software Management>Install Software and type hdparm in the Search field then tick on hdparm in the search results.If some dependencies pop up tick OK then tick the Install button on the bottom. You will be prompted to insert one or more of the install disks and when everything is done, hdparm will be installed. To check your hard drives, open a console, su to root per the above and run the following: #hdparm -v /dev/hdb The dma line of the printout should read: using_dma = 1 (on). If not, you can turn it on by running the following command: #hdparm -d1 /dev/hdb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Cool, thanks. It was on though...any other suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 What about the others...IO_support, unmaskirq, and readahead? After install mine was [root@localhost bvc]# hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) IO_support = 0 (off) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 8 (on) geometry = 3736/255/63, sectors = 60030432, start = 0 and my test were [root@localhost bvc]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.32 seconds = 96.97 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.81 seconds = 28.36 MB/sec After [root@localhost bvc]# hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) IO_support = 3 (32-bit w/sync) unmaskirq = 1 (on) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 16 (on) geometry = 3736/255/63, sectors = 60030432, start = 0 [root@localhost bvc]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.06 seconds = 123.97 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.78 seconds = 36.56 MB/sec Also look at hdparm -I /dev/hda and hdparm -i /dev/hda to see what else you can do and what mdma/udma is set to..(look for the *) Also look at /var/log/messages, and /var/log/dmesg for any hardware/chipsets not working/info ect... Arg!! I hate this 66MHz bus speed!! Can you say...bottleneck :wink: or, BS. :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 What about the others...IO_support, unmaskirq, and readahead? Niice...but what exactly are those? haha, i don't want to just randomly mess around with things i don't understand if you know what i mean. Also...it seems you were pretty successful with it, any tips as to how to tweak them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 As for the partitioning thing. If you crash and burn your system you can alway reload the os and drivers into the root partition without reformating the others. So having your user,home, server files and just about anything else you want, each on different partitions, means that you don't loose anything in rebuilding the system. Its the safe way to do things and its quicker on the rebuild. I think windows preloads most of its stuff into memory so that when you call on it it just pops up real fast like. But put a little work on that prossesor and I bet she slows down like a pig. Were as linux just keeps on going. If im wrong on this please speak up someone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 i don't want to just randomly mess around with things i don't understand if you know what i meanSmart. take a look athdparm --help and/or man hdparm google for what things are I guess....too extensive and complicate for me to explain here. Besides, because of the possible dangers of messing with these settings you really should study them a bit, and hear from those with a lot more expertise than I. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregor Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Duron 750 MHz & 256Mb RAM Buffered disk reads: 37 - 38 MB/sec boot time (+ login & startkde): less than 60s kmail: 2-3s konqueror: 3-4s mozilla: 6-9s (note: it does take longer the first time a program is loaded) But Windows XP is still faster... KDE performance tips http://dforce.sh.cvut.cz/~seli/download/tips.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 From what i understand XP loads the desktop as soon as possible so that you have something to look at and play with. In the first minute it is still loading the rest of the system in the background. I think they got this idea from Apple/Mac. I'm sure linux can be made to boot in just the same way but I've never been interested in it since I leave mine on most of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest richard_haggath Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 i had a similar problem but when reinstalled i put in a swap file manually of about 800 megs and now the beast is so much faster than xp i don't think that the dual booting thing is a problem it's the partitions maybe. try to enlarge the swap file. i think anyway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IntegraR0064 Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 i had a similar problem but when reinstalled i put in a swap file manually of about 800 megs and now the beast is so much faster than xp i don't think that the dual booting thing is a problem it's the partitions maybe. try to enlarge the swap file. how much ram do you have? I don't think my system's even using my swap file... Thanks for all the replies, i've been busy but this weekend i'm going to see if i can try some of this stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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