From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 17 7: 1:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from nms2.ggamaur.net (nms2.ggamaur.net [213.160.40.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 54B9837B404 for ; Thu, 17 Jan 2002 07:01:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from merlin (maxlor@c-213-160-32-54.customer.ggaweb.ch [213.160.32.54]) by nms2.ggamaur.net (8.11.3/8.11.3) with SMTP id g0HF17358179 for ; Thu, 17 Jan 2002 16:01:08 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from mail@maxlor.com) From: "Maxlor" To: Subject: Low HD Transfer Speeds Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 16:00:56 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi, This old box of mine (Pentium 90, 32MB RAM) is running FreeBSD-4.5RC. I use it as fileserver, however, I am not satisfied with its performance. My LAN here runs on 100Mbit and shows a performance of above 6MB/sec with modern computers, however when transferring files to or from that old P90, i get speeds between 1.3 and 1.8MB/sec. I.e., when connecting to proftpd, I get an average and pretty constant speed of 1.3MB/sec (at which point CPU Usage is at almost 100%; top shows that only about 10% are spent on interrupts), when using the much more lightweight standard ftpd, i get 1.8MB/sec, and samba is somewhere in between. This performance didn't surprise me much, when the HD was running in PIO4 mode; Now, I recently switched HDs and FreeBSD now reports that the HD is running in WDMA2 mode (see dmesg output below). However, the performance has stayed on the same level - still the same 1.3MB/sec from proftpd. The only thing that i noticed is that the amount spent on interrupts (again, according to top) was very high before, above 40%. The thing that confuses me a bit is that the BIOS only gives me PIO1-PIO4 as modes in which to run the HD. I suppose though that FreeBSD knows what it's doing when it's saying it runs it in WDMA2 mode. So, do you guys have some ideas on how to improve transfer speeds? Technical Details below. Have a lot of fun, Maxlor Details about the machine: CPU Is a Pentium 90 as mentioned, it has 16MB EDO RAM and 16MB FP RAM (seems to work fine together), and the NICs are PCI cards; there are no ISA cards. dc0 is the card looking at the LAN, ed0 is connected to the net and not involved in the file transfers in question. The mainboard... no clue, really. The HD is a 20GB Maxtor 740DX which is capable of UDMA133 and reaches a transfer rate of 17MB/sec according to some tests i read recently. uname output: FreeBSD Atlantis 4.5-RC FreeBSD 4.5-RC #0: Mon Jan 14 01:06:16 CET 2002 root@Atlantis:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ATLANTIS i386 dmesg output: Copyright (c) 1992-2002 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 4.5-RC #0: Mon Jan 14 01:06:16 CET 2002 root@Atlantis:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ATLANTIS Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz CPU: Pentium/P54C (90.00-MHz 586-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x525 Stepping = 5 Features=0x1bf real memory = 33554432 (32768K bytes) avail memory = 30072832 (29368K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc02b5000. Intel Pentium detected, installing workaround for F00F bug VESA: v1.2, 2048k memory, flags:0x0, mode table:0xc00c5186 (c0005186) VESA: ARK LOGIC, INC. ARK1000PV npx0: on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: on motherboard pci0: on pcib0 isab0: at device 1.0 on pci0 isa0: on isab0 atapci0: port 0x4000-0x400f,0-0x3,0-0x7,0-0x3,0-0x7 irq 0 at device 1.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 pci0: at 16.0 ed0: port 0xff80-0xff9f irq 11 at device 17.0 on pci0 ed0: address 00:60:52:0b:58:73, type NE2000 (16 bit) dc0: port 0xfc00-0xfcff mem 0xffbdff00-0xffbdffff irq 10 at device 18.0 on pci0 dc0: Ethernet address: 00:80:ad:0b:37:27 miibus0: on dc0 ukphy0: on miibus0 ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto orm0: