marnik.org

And there was hdparm…

First of all, for people who don’t know what hdparm is, I recommend reading the manpages hdparm(8) about it. You could also do some googling and/or read this article about it. I tried it out on my freshly configged Ubuntu box and here are the results (and how I achieved them).

To do some benchmarking hdparm comes with the very usefull -T and -t flags, for benchmarking (see manpage for details)

So… I did a test on my system as it was before fiddling around with it (which means: the system Ubuntu offered me). Here are the results…

hdparm -i /dev/hda /dev/hdc /dev/hdd


/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 40020664320, start = 0

/dev/hdd:
multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 60040544256, start =


These are the default settings, and these are the results:

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda /dev/hdc /dev/hdd


/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1376 MB in 2.00 seconds = 687.42 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 54 MB in 3.10 seconds = 17.44 MB/sec

/dev/hdd:
Timing cached reads: 1412 MB in 2.00 seconds = 705.05 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.07 seconds = 20.86 MB/sec


Not bad. Now I applied these settings:


hdparm -d1 -X udma2 -c3 -m16 -u1 -W1 -A1 -a256 /dav/hda
hdparm -d1 -X udma2 -c3 -m16 -u1 -W1 -A1 -a256 /dev/hdc
hdparm -d1 -X udma2 -c3 -m16 -u1 -W1 -A1 -a256 /dev/hdd


and these are the new results


/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1484 MB in 2.00 seconds = 740.26 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 58 MB in 3.04 seconds = 19.05 MB/sec

/dev/hdd:
Timing cached reads: 1476 MB in 2.00 seconds = 737.37 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.02 seconds = 21.21 MB/sec
root@jesusdesk:/home/jesus # hdparm -Tt /dev/hda /dev/hdc /dev/hdd


Long story short, this is my speed-gain:


/dev/hda:
687.42 -> 740.26
17.44 -> 19.05
/dev/hdc:
714.32 -> 734.64
23.17 -> 26.28
/dev/hdd:
705.05 -> 737.37
20.86 -> 21.21


Not bad, not bad…

For those who care, here’s some sysinfo:

• P4 1.8GHz
• 512 DDR
• Some Intel mobo that has udma2 as speed limit :’(
• /dev/hda is a Seagate 40 gig 5400 rpm HD
• /dev/hdc is a Maxtor 200 gig 7200 rpm HD
• /dev/hdd is a Maxtor 60 gig 7200 rpm HD

And some more HD info:


/dev/hda:

* signifies the current active mode


/dev/hdc:

* signifies the current active mode



/dev/hdd:

* signifies the current active mode


4 commentaren February 28th, 2005

CD-ROM breakdown?

So, I finally decided to get rid of Windows and to get Ubuntu, and now the crap begins.
I bought a brand new Maxtor 200 gig IDE drive and plugged it in, everything worked fine. Now it seems like there is a problem with either my primary IDE channel or with my CD-ROM-drive (an LG 12x burner for the record), it takes ages to get past the bios-screen and to get booting. I suspect my LG is the troublemaker, mostly because a few weeks ago this was my configuration:

• Primary IDE
  • Master: harddisk 40 gig 5400 rpm
  • Slave: none
• Secondary IDE
  • Master: harddisk 60 gig 7200 rpm
  • Slave: LG 12x CD-Writer

My secondary IDE port was forced to run in PIO mode, there is this “feature” in Windows XP that most people think of as a bug, and this is the description (found on this site:

PIO mode is enabled by default in the following situations:
…
For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.

Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).
…

Long story short, insert a scratched CD and the whole channel get reverted to PIO, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I tried ti hack my way around it, but it looked like there were too much IO-errors to make it work in DMA-mode.

Now, with my brand new 200 gig maxtor, this is my new setup:

• Primary IDE
  • Master: harddisk 40 gig 5400 rpm
  • Slave: LG 12x CD-Writer
• Secondary IDE
  • Master: harddisk 200 gig 7200 rpm
  • Slave: harddisk 60 gig 7200 rpm

If I don’t attach the CD-ROM (and make all possible combinations with the HD’s) everything works fine. When I DO plug in the CD-ROM, it takes about a whole minut to get past the bios-screen, and Grub loading takes ages, I mean, it takes over a minute (without the CD-ROM it takes not even a second). This leaves me with 2 possibilities, either there is something wrong with my primary IDE-channel, or the CD-ROM is bitching. Seen the PIO story I had with XP, it seems to me LG needs to get thrown out of the window (as G8KeePeR suggested).

Believe it or not, I am installing Ubuntu as we speak… USING THE LG CD-ROM-drive!

It gets me so confused…

7 commentaren February 27th, 2005

The Fifth Sentence

I found this article and followed some links to see it goes way back, to here, here, here, here, etc… The last one wasn’t linked directly to the relevant post, and I have no time to look for it so here my list ends. All the ones I posted got a trackback

Here goes:

Ik ben in de loop der tijden steeds woedender en moedelozer geworden.

It’s quoted from “Pitface” by Herman Brusselmans. It’s a Belgian book that I haven’t read yet, it belongs to a friend of mine (Jille) and it hasn’t moved for about 7 months. I should return it or read it. Time is against me.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

2 commentaren February 24th, 2005

Ubuntu deserves a shot

Ubuntu here I come!
I always worked with Windows, don’t ask me why, I just grew up with it. A few years ago I had a very brief Linux experience, but about 2 years ago I worked about 8 months with Gentoo. Gentoo is a great distro, and it was very popular at that time (I still run it on my P200!). I needed Windows too for school, so I had a dual boot system set up.
BUT! When I returned to gentoo after a few weeks and updated my system it was suddenly fubarred. I went back to windows, and somehow I needed some diskspace and I deleted my gentoo (it was broken anyway and I didn’t feel like fixing it).

Yesterday I bought a 200 GB HD (Maxtor if you’d care), which means I can throw out Windows again and get back to Linux. I have a portable computer that runs Windows XP, so there is really no need whatsoever to run Windows anymore. I am now sorting my data (to make sure I don’t lose anything) and later on I’m going to give Ubuntu a shot. I was going to try Archlinux first, but I was told that Ubuntu is a real pleasure to work with so I’ll give it a go.

8 commentaren February 24th, 2005

They are coming to eat us!

Yesterday I saw this commercial on TV that disgusted me completely. It was the commercial for a program called “Je Bent Wat Je Eet”, a TV-show on VTM (a Belgian network), the traduction would be “You Are What You Eat”.

It’s a show about fat people that eat too much. No Wait, it’s a show about INCREDIBLY FUCKING FAT PEOPLE that eat EVERYTHING THAT COMES NEAR ‘EM!
Seriously. The commercial shows this lady (lady? LADY? I know more appropriate words…) having Fries (French Fries, Frieten) for breakfast, but not the normal ones, no, the nastiest menu you can find in Belgium. And then there’s this other “lady” (lol) eating mayonaise with a spoon. Read it again, yes, mayo - with - a - spoon.
There’s also a guy eating god knows what, it looks disgusting, and someone baking a steak in 125 grams of butter. I don’t know if you have any idea of what 125 grams of butter is, well, I didn’t untill I saw this, it’s HALF a pack of butter (a 250 gram one, obviously)! This litteraly means that the steak is getting boiled in fat, I wish I had a picture. No wait, I don’t.

There’s also this great page on ihate on fat people, go read it (or read the whole post about it).

YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SICK!

5 commentaren February 24th, 2005

Niki in P-Magazine

As cush_ writes in this article, you can find Niki in P-Magazine. If you want to know more about Niki look overhere.

And ofcourse, here are the pictures

1 commentaar February 23rd, 2005

Locating target…

I was searching for cool plugins and found this one, it looks up the country an IP originates from (by using ip2nation) and allows you to get a fancy flag. All you have to do is read the site, it explains everything. If it doesn’t work, you didn’t read all of it.

The result is whatever you see when you’re looking at comments on my site.

Great plugin.

4 commentaren February 23rd, 2005