Really, REALLY slow computer

[Steve Blackwell]

So, 
new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin 250G
ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I do is to
load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean REALLY
slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. Both processors
are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary, memory
usage is abot 15%.

During boot I get these two error messages:

...
Starting udev: Wait timeout. Will continue in the background. [FAILED]
...

and

...
Warning: Error inserting freq_table
(/lib/modules/2.6.20-1.2944.fc6/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/freq_table.ko):
Required key not available.
...

The CPU frequency monitor applet show CPU0 to be running between 1.60
and 2.13GHz.

I checked through messages and these couple of things look suspicious:

ACPI: exception (acpi_processor-0677): AE_NOT_FOUND, Processor Device is
not present [10060707]

This message was repeated for the 2nd processor.

speedstep-centrino with X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI config is depreciated.
  Use X86_ACPI_CPUFREQ (acpi-cpufreq) instead

ata: 0x01F0 IDE port busy
ata: conflict with IDE 0.
ata: 0x0170 IDE port busy
ata: conflict with ide1
ata_piix: probe of 000:00:1f.2 failed with error -16

Does anyone have any insight of these messages or whwre to start looking
to fix this.

Thanks,
Steve

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

[e-mail] wrote:
> So, 
> new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin 250G
> ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I do is to
> load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
> loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean REALLY
> slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. Both processors
> are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary, memory
> usage is abot 15%.

Bad news: I have a HP DC7700. It is unusable with FC6. Don't even bother.

Good news: It is OK with FC7T3 (certain kernel arguments are required in 
grub.conf, something about "noapci", I forget the exact details right now).

The newer kernel on FC7T3 has much better support for the onboard devices.

My only problem at the moment is that the system clock loses time even 
though the nptd server is running.

- Mike

[Alan]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, [e-mail] wrote:
> So,
> new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin 250G
> ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I do is to
> load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
> loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean REALLY
> slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. Both processors
> are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary, memory
> usage is abot 15%.

My daughter's machine (which it about 100 mile away, unfortunatly) is 
having the same problem.  It is a 32-bit AMD system.  I will try and get 
logs dumped from her machine this weekend.

Are you using the latest kernel?  (I am not certai what the version number 
is on the latest FC6 kernel is.)

[Steve Blackwell]

----- Original Message -----
From: alan 
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2007 12:04 pm
Subject: Re: Really, REALLY slow computer
To: For users of Fedora
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, [e-mail] wrote:
> > So,
> > new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin
>
> 250G> ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I 
> do is to
> > load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
> > loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean
>
> REALLY> slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. 
> Both processors
> > are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary,
>
> memory> usage is abot 15%.
>
> My daughter's machine (which it about 100 mile away, unfortunatly) 
> is 
> having the same problem.  It is a 32-bit AMD system.  I will try 
> and get 
> logs dumped from her machine this weekend.
>
> Are you using the latest kernel?  (I am not certai what the version 
> number 
> is on the latest FC6 kernel is.)

Yes, I've got the latest kernel, at least as of this morning:
$ uname -r
2.6.20-1.2944.fc6

Steve.

[Steve Blackwell]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak" 
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:55 am
Subject: Re: Really, REALLY slow computer
To: For users of Fedora
> [e-mail] wrote:
> > So, 
> > new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin
>
> 250G> ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I 
> do is to
> > load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
> > loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean
>
> REALLY> slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. 
> Both processors
> > are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary,
>
> memory> usage is abot 15%.
>
> Bad news: I have a HP DC7700. It is unusable with FC6. Don't even 
> bother.

Is this news anecdotal or do you have a link or e-mail you can point me to?
> Good news: It is OK with FC7T3 (certain kernel arguments are 
> required in 
> grub.conf, something about "noapci", I forget the exact details 
> right now).
>
> The newer kernel on FC7T3 has much better support for the onboard 
> devices.

OK, I've kicked off a bittorrent for FC7T3. I'll see how that goes.
> My only problem at the moment is that the system clock loses time 
> even 
> though the nptd server is running.
> Mike

The ntpd server might be running but is it connecting to its peer servers?

Steve.

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

> Yes, I've got the latest kernel, at least as of this morning:
> $ uname -r
> 2.6.20-1.2944.fc6

You need the 2.6.21 kernels.

- Mike

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

> > Bad news: I have a HP DC7700. It is unusable with FC6. Don't even 
> > bother.
>
> Is this news anecdotal or do you have a link or e-mail you can point me to?

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1081719...
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37136
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-January/msg00769.html

Just google for "DC7700 and linux"...
> > My only problem at the moment is that the system clock loses time 
> > even 
> > though the nptd server is running.
> > Mike
>
> The ntpd server might be running but is it connecting to its peer servers?

It syncs to the ntpd peer servers after I change settings in 
system-config-date, but it loses sync after that.

I've disabled the ntpd server and I am running ntpdate every minute from 
a cron job. Which sucks, but at least it works. iptables and selinux are 
disabled, so it's not that.

- Mike

[Billy Davis]

We had this same problem 18 months ago with RHEL 3.  Turns out it was a 
memory problem.   As long as we ran with 512MB, everything ran fast and 
fine.  But, when we increased the memory to 1GB and higher, something 
happened to slow the system to aan unbelievable crawl.  Seems like there 
was a bios upgrade from Intel that fixed the problem.

Bdavis

[e-mail] wrote:
> So, 
> new job and a shiny new HP Duo Core computer with 2G RAM and twin 250G
> ATA drives, loaded with Windows XP of course. The 1st thing I do is to
> load FC6 on the 2nd of the disks. After 2 days (!) I have everything
> loaded and updated but the system is running really, and I mean REALLY
> slow. It takes about 15 mins to boot up and 5 to log in. Both processors
> are heavily loaded but yet top shows nothing out of the ordinary, memory
> usage is abot 15%.
>
> During boot I get these two error messages:
>
> ...
> Starting udev: Wait timeout. Will continue in the background. [FAILED]
> ...
>
> and
>
> ...
> Warning: Error inserting freq_table
> (/lib/modules/2.6.20-1.2944.fc6/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/freq_table.ko):
> Required key not available.
> ...
>
> The CPU frequency monitor applet show CPU0 to be running between 1.60
> and 2.13GHz.
>
> I checked through messages and these couple of things look suspicious:
>
> ACPI: exception (acpi_processor-0677): AE_NOT_FOUND, Processor Device is
> not present [10060707]
>
> This message was repeated for the 2nd processor.
>
> speedstep-centrino with X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI config is depreciated.
>   Use X86_ACPI_CPUFREQ (acpi-cpufreq) instead
>
> ata: 0x01F0 IDE port busy
> ata: conflict with IDE 0.
> ata: 0x0170 IDE port busy
> ata: conflict with ide1
> ata_piix: probe of 000:00:1f.2 failed with error -16
>
> Does anyone have any insight of these messages or whwre to start looking
> to fix this.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve

[Mikkel]

Billy Davis wrote:
> We had this same problem 18 months ago with RHEL 3.  Turns out it was a
> memory problem.   As long as we ran with 512MB, everything ran fast and
> fine.  But, when we increased the memory to 1GB and higher, something
> happened to slow the system to aan unbelievable crawl.  Seems like there
> was a bios upgrade from Intel that fixed the problem.
>
> Bdavis

That sounds like a version of this problem: (from memory.txt in the
kernel docs...)

3) There are some motherboards that will not cache above
   a certain quantity of memory.  If you have one of these
   motherboards, your system will be SLOWER, not faster
   as you add more memory.  Consider exchanging your
   motherboard.

Mikkel

[Tim]

On Thu, 2007-04-19 at 15:53 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Consider exchanging your motherboard.

Do any manufacturers make a claim that their motherboards run fine with
Linux?  I'd be surprised if any design their boards for anything but
Microsoft.

[Claude Jones]

On Thu April 19 2007, Tim wrote:
> Do any manufacturers make a claim that their motherboards run fine with
> Linux?  I'd be surprised if any design their boards for anything but
> Microsoft.

SuperMicro H8DCE does - even has Linux specific option in the BIOS settings; 
I've seen  others advertise Linux compatibility but names don't come to mind 
at the moment. I happen to be building two SuperMicro Superservers these past 
two weeks so I've spent a lot of time in the documentation.

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Mikkel L. Ellertson

| That sounds like a version of this problem: (from memory.txt in the
| kernel docs...)
| 
| 3) There are some motherboards that will not cache above
|    a certain quantity of memory.  If you have one of these
|    motherboards, your system will be SLOWER, not faster
|    as you add more memory.  Consider exchanging your
|    motherboard.

As far as I know, that problem dates back to the Pentium 1 days.  It
probably isn't true of any modern systems.  It might be the case for
some CPUs designed for embedded applications and the like.

I imagine that it only applies to systems with external (to the CPU
module) cache.  So it should not apply to Pentium II or later Intel
chips and K7 or later AMD chips.

(I'm typing this in on an AMD K6-200 system (roughly a decade old).
Its motherboard uses an Intel TX chipset which has exactly this
limitation: nothing over 64M would be cached.  Luckily, I only have
64M.  Motherboards of that era based on the Intel HX chipset sometimes
had slots for specialized memory modules to extend the cache tags.)

http://www.access-one.com/rjn/computer/cache64m.txt

There are other odd memory limitations.  For example, my notebook has
a Broadcom 802.11g chipset that cannot DMA into memory above 1G.
Undocumented (but what isn't undocumented about that chipset?).

http://lists.pcxperience.com/pipermail/linuxr3000/2005-March/005085.html

================

Sometimes machines run slowly due to being swamped by unhandled
interrupts.  It would be interesting to monitor /proc/interrupts to
see if this is happening.

================

My HP Pavilion a1250n desktop (Athlon 64 x2 3800+, ATI Radeon XPress 200
chipset) had some problems with Linux in the early days.  The clock
ran twice as fast due to some miswiring of the APIC (I think).  Recent
kernels have a workaround.  As a purist, I really dislike the fact
that Linux has to work around bugs rather than expect manufacturers to
fix them.

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3927