[Soekris] Harddisk slow

Mon Jan 29 18:11:20 UTC 2007

Hi Heinrich!

I think it's almost the best speed you can achieve from the device. I've 
got the same type of Soekris with a SAMSUNG HM080HC HDD (which is the 
slave).
This HDD supports perpendicular recording 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpendicular_recording). Higher data 
recording density means bigger transfer speeds.
I'm running Gentoo Linux with kernel version 2.6.18 on the Soekris.

Here are the results:

soekris ~ # dd if=/home/100mb.dat of=/dev/null
204800+0 records in
204800+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 7.7067 seconds, 13.6 MB/s

(The CPU usage is also 100% here while the reading is done. I've been 
using ext3 filesystem.)

Cheers,
Mátyás

Heinrich Rebehn wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> on my 4801-60 i have a FUJITSU MHV2120AT running as slave. The 
> performance is poor:
>
> root at rebserv [/data] # time dd if=100Mb.dat of=/dev/null
> 204800+0 records in
> 204800+0 records out
> 104857600 bytes transferred in 11.980 secs (8752083 bytes/sec)
>
> real    0m12.042s
> user    0m0.789s
> sys     0m10.383s
>
> 8.7 MB/Sec really is not much. What worries me more, is that vmstat 
> shows ~90% sys for the cpu while reading from the disk. This suggests 
> that the disk is not accessed in DMA mode, although dmesg talks about 
> UDMA2. How can i verify that the disk is running in DMA mode?
>
> Config:
> #########################################################################
> comBIOS ver. 1.28  20050529  Copyright (C) 2000-2005 Soekris Engineering.
>
> net4801
>
> 0256 Mbyte Memory                        CPU Geode 266 Mhz
>
> Pri Mas  SanDisk SDCFH-512               LBA 993-16-63  500 Mbyte
> Pri Sla  FUJITSU MHV2120AT               LBA Xlt 1024-255-63  51684 Mbyte
>
> Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 0:00:0 1078 0001 06000000 0107 0280 00 00 00 00000000 00000000
> 0:06:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E101 A0000000 10
> 0:07:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E201 A0001000 10
> 0:08:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E301 A0002000 10
> 0:10:0 13A3 0020 0B400000 0116 0280 08 3C 00 A0003000 A0004000 11
> 0:18:2 100B 0502 01018001 0005 0280 00 00 00 00000000 00000000
> 0:19:0 0E11 A0F8 0C031008 0117 0280 08 38 00 A0010000 00000000 05
>
>   1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
> #####################################################################
>
> dmesg:
> #####################################################################
> OpenBSD 4.0-stable (GENERIC) #1: Mon Nov  6 17:19:58 CET 2006
>  
> root at obsdmaster.ant.uni-bremen.de:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
> cpu0: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi ("Geode by NSC" 
> 586-class) 267 MH
> z
> cpu0: FPU,TSC,MSR,CX8,CMOV,MMX
> cpu0: TSC disabled
> real mem  = 268005376 (261724K)
> avail mem = 236724224 (231176K)
> using 3297 buffers containing 13504512 bytes (13188K) of memory
> mainbus0 (root)
> bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+(00) BIOS, date 20/50/29, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xf7840
> pcibios0 at bios0: rev 2.0 @ 0xf0000/0x10000
> pcibios0: pcibios_get_intr_routing - function not supported
> pcibios0: PCI IRQ Routing information unavailable.
> pcibios0: PCI bus #0 is the last bus
> bios0: ROM list: 0xc8000/0x9000
> cpu0 at mainbus0
> pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
> pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Cyrix GXm PCI" rev 0x00
> sis0 at pci0 dev 6 function 0 "NS DP83815 10/100" rev 0x00, DP83816A: 
> irq 10, address 0
> 0:00:24:c7:34:00
> nsphyter0 at sis0 phy 0: DP83815 10/100 PHY, rev. 1
> sis1 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "NS DP83815 10/100" rev 0x00, DP83816A: 
> irq 10, address 0
> 0:00:24:c7:34:01
> nsphyter1 at sis1 phy 0: DP83815 10/100 PHY, rev. 1
> sis2 at pci0 dev 8 function 0 "NS DP83815 10/100" rev 0x00, DP83816A: 
> irq 10, address 0
> 0:00:24:c7:34:02
> nsphyter2 at sis2 phy 0: DP83815 10/100 PHY, rev. 1
> hifn0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Hifn 7955/7954" rev 0x00: LZS 3DES ARC4 
> MD5 SHA1 RNG A
> ES PK, 32KB dram, irq 11
> gscpcib0 at pci0 dev 18 function 0 "NS SC1100 ISA" rev 0x00
> gpio0 at gscpcib0: 64 pins
> "NS SC1100 SMI" rev 0x00 at pci0 dev 18 function 1 not configured
> pciide0 at pci0 dev 18 function 2 "NS SCx200 IDE" rev 0x01: DMA, channel 
> 0 wired to com
> patibility, channel 1 wired to compatibility
> wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <SanDisk SDCFH-512>
> wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 488MB, 1000944 sectors
> wd1 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 1: <FUJITSU MHV2120AT>
> wd1: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 114473MB, 234441648 sectors
> wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
> wd1(pciide0:0:1): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2
> geodesc0 at pci0 dev 18 function 5 "NS SC1100 X-Bus" rev 0x00: iid 6 
> revision 3 wdstatu
> s 0
> ohci0 at pci0 dev 19 function 0 "Compaq USB OpenHost" rev 0x08: irq 5, 
> version 1.0, leg
> acy support
> usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
> uhub0 at usb0
> uhub0: Compaq OHCI root hub, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
> uhub0: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
> isa0 at gscpcib0
> isadma0 at isa0
> pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
> pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
> pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
> wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard
> pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
> midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
> spkr0 at pcppi0
> nsclpcsio0 at isa0 port 0x2e/2: NSC PC87366 rev 9: GPIO VLM TMS
> gpio1 at nsclpcsio0: 29 pins
> gscsio0 at isa0 port 0x15c/2: SC1100 SIO rev 1:
> npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: using exception 16
> pccom0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
> pccom0: console
> pccom1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
> biomask f3e5 netmask ffe5 ttymask ffe7
> pctr: no performance counters in CPU
> dkcsum: wd0 matches BIOS drive 0x80
> dkcsum: wd1 matches BIOS drive 0x81
> root on wd0a
> rootdev=0x0 rrootdev=0x300 rawdev=0x302
> ##########################################################################
>
> Thanks for any help :-)
>   