Running kernel-2.6.9-1.11_FC2 is insanely slow

[Christopher Calzonetti]

I upgraded to the new kernel yesterday, just using the default binary, 
and the good news is that it looks like I can do a full sync with my 
Palm Zire 72, which I wasn't able to do under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2.

Unfortunately, the whole system runs significantly slower than before, 
to the point of making it unuseable.

I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem.  Can someone offer 
some suggestions, or can someone else confirm that they are also having 
this problem?
-- 
Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
     mailto:[e-mail],ca   phone:[phone] x7516

[Christopher Calzonetti]

Further to this.

I did an update to Fedora Core 3, hoping that it was specific to the one 
kernel.  With no noticeable improvement.

Just so people have a better picture here, the boot time, to get to the 
actual login prompt of the GDM, under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2 from the grub 
selection screen is roughly 70 seconds.

The time to get from the grub selection screen to the "Hit 'I' for 
interactive startup" message at the start of the boot under the newer 
kernels is 50 seconds!  Everything else is similarly affected.

If anyone has ANY ideas, please let me know.


Christopher Calzonetti wrote:
>  I upgraded to the new kernel yesterday, just using the default
> binary, 
>  and the good news is that it looks like I can do a full sync with my 
>  Palm Zire 72, which I wasn't able to do under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2.
>  
>  Unfortunately, the whole system runs significantly slower than before, 
>  to the point of making it unuseable.
>  
>  I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem.  Can someone offer 
>  some suggestions, or can someone else confirm that they are also having 
>  this problem? 
-- 
Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
     mailto:[e-mail],ca   phone:[phone] x7516

[David Cary Hart]

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 16:31 -0500, Christopher Calzonetti wrote:
>  Further to this.
>   
========================snip-------------------------------------
>  The time to get from the grub selection screen to the "Hit
> 'I' for 
>  interactive startup" message at the start of the boot under the newer 
>  kernels is 50 seconds!  Everything else is similarly affected.
>  
>  If anyone has ANY ideas, please let me know. 
To the disdain of some, I am a big believer in NEVER using the stock
kernel. Anecdotally, many people realize performance improvements by
compiling their own kernel with the specific processor and eliminating
the 4gb4gb split. 
________________________________________________________________________
Total Quality Management - A Commitment to Excellence
http://www.TQMcube.com

[Robert Locke]

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 16:37, David Cary Hart wrote:

>  To the disdain of some, I am a big believer in NEVER using the stock
>  kernel. Anecdotally, many people realize performance improvements by
>  compiling their own kernel with the specific processor and eliminating
>  the 4gb4gb split.  
I am not sure how much difference in performance you will see from the
recompile for your processor....

And FYI, from the changelog for the most recent FC2
kernel-2.6.9-1.11_FC2:

* Fri Dec 31 2004 Dave Jones <davej(a)redhat.com&gt;
 
- Drop 4g/4g patch completely.

And from the announcement:

A large change over previous kernels has been made. The 4G:4G memory
split patch has been dropped, and Fedora kernels now revert back to
the upstream 3G:1G kernel/userspace split.


--Rob

[Kam Leo]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:31:01 -0500, Christopher Calzonetti
<ccalzone(a)math.uwaterloo.ca&gt; wrote:
>  Further to this.
>  
>  I did an update to Fedora Core 3, hoping that it was specific to the one
>  kernel.  With no noticeable improvement.
>  
>  Just so people have a better picture here, the boot time, to get to the
>  actual login prompt of the GDM, under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2 from the grub
>  selection screen is roughly 70 seconds.
>  
>  The time to get from the grub selection screen to the "Hit 'I' for
>  interactive startup" message at the start of the boot under the newer
>  kernels is 50 seconds!  Everything else is similarly affected.
>  
>  If anyone has ANY ideas, please let me know.
>  
>  Christopher Calzonetti wrote:
>  > I upgraded to the new kernel yesterday, just using the default binary,
>  > and the good news is that it looks like I can do a full sync with my
>  > Palm Zire 72, which I wasn't able to do under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2.
>  >
>  > Unfortunately, the whole system runs significantly slower than before,
>  > to the point of making it unuseable.
>  >
>  > I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem.  Can someone offer
>  > some suggestions, or can someone else confirm that they are also having
>  > this problem?
>  
>  --
>  Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
>       mailto:[e-mail],ca   phone:[phone] x7516
>  
>  -- 
Boot time of 70 seconds may be normal for some users. Boot time is all
relative to cpu and hardware speeds. We need to have something with
which to guage whether your particular boot time is too long.  How
fast is your gear? As a general answer, on my system FC3 takes longer
than FC1 or FC2 to boot.

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

 We need to have something with
>  which to guage whether your particular boot time is too long.  
http://bootchart.sf.net


-- 
Regards,
Rahul Sundaram

[Christopher Calzonetti]

There have been a lot of folk who've replied over the weekend.  Thanks.

Just to clarify, the problem is not that the new kernels boot slowly.

The problem is that the whole system runs slowly.

Someone said that 70 seconds was not slow for some systems.  Yes. 
That's how long it takes for a complete boot for me on the OLD kernel. 
The 50 seconds time is to get the the first stage of the boot under the 
NEW kernel.  The full boot time takes around 8 MINUTES!

Logging in is similarly painfully slow.

Starting up a terminal is similarly painfully slow. (20ish seconds to 
get a prompt under gnome-terminal compared to maybe 2 seconds under the 
old kernel!)

I tried some people's suggestions, however.  Removing quiet from the 
grub boot up produced a whole bunch of extra messages at the start of 
the boot, but nothing seemed to hang at any particular point.

There's no significant problems (or differences) showing up in dmesg or 
the modules loaded that I can tell between the two kernels.

If folk think that the output of this bootchart tool will truly be 
useful, I can give it a try, but this isn't simply limited to the boot 
process, so I'm less confident of that.

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  Hi
>  
>   We need to have something with
>  
> >which to guage whether your particular boot time is too long.  
>  
>  
>  http://bootchart.sf.net
>  
>   
-- 
Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
     mailto:[e-mail],ca   phone:[phone] x7516

[Dave Jones]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 04:31:01PM -0500, Christopher Calzonetti wrote:
>  Further to this.
>  
>  I did an update to Fedora Core 3, hoping that it was specific to the one 
>  kernel.  With no noticeable improvement.
>  
>  Just so people have a better picture here, the boot time, to get to the 
>  actual login prompt of the GDM, under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2 from the grub 
>  selection screen is roughly 70 seconds.
>  
>  The time to get from the grub selection screen to the "Hit 'I' for 
>  interactive startup" message at the start of the boot under the newer 
>  kernels is 50 seconds!  Everything else is similarly affected.
>  
>  If anyone has ANY ideas, please let me know. 
Remove the 'quiet' from the grub command line. This will make it
spew all teh kernel msgs on boot. You should then notice it hang
at some point.

My current bet is on the IDE stuff, which takes a while to
time out probing on some systems for some reason.

		Dave

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 09:20:29PM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
>  My current bet is on the IDE stuff, which takes a while to
>  time out probing on some systems for some reason. 
_So_ painful, yeah. A workaround for those stuck with this:

  hda=none hdb=none hdc=none hdd=none

or

  ide0=noprobe ide1=noprobe

on the kernel command line.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm(a)mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>

[Chadley Wilson]

On Wednesday 05 January 2005 16:50, Christopher Calzonetti wrote:
>  I upgraded to the new kernel yesterday, just using the default
> binary,
>  and the good news is that it looks like I can do a full sync with my
>  Palm Zire 72, which I wasn't able to do under 2.6.9-1.6_FC2.
>
>  Unfortunately, the whole system runs significantly slower than before,
>  to the point of making it unuseable.
>
>  I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem.  Can someone offer
>  some suggestions, or can someone else confirm that they are also having
>  this problem?
>  --
>  Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
>       mailto:[e-mail],ca   phone:[phone] x7516 
Hi Christopher,

I had the same problem as you did only with 2.6.9_681 kernel.
I also thought it was kernel related at first. do your self a favour and 
intstall your old kernel again and see if thats what is causing it.

I discovered that it was not the kernel itself but it was the  driver for my 
south bridge chip that did not load. The south brige control quite a lot of 
you resources. I am not sure however why my pc still worked, I suppose the 
kernel has some generic thing in it.
I had to "modprobe shpchp" to my rc.local
Now she runs
Hope this helps



-- 
Chadley Wilson
Redhat Certified Technician 
Cert Number: 603004708291270
Pinnacle Micro
Manufacturers of Proline Computers
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