[ale] Re: [ale] boot parms ide=???

[Michael D. Hirsch]

Excellent write-up, Marvin.  My one comment is that in RedHat, and 
presumably other distributions, too, putting these commands in 
/etc/rc.d/rc.local is not the right place.

RedHat has /etc/sysconfig/harddisks.  It is well commented.  You basically 
figure out your hdparm settings and add them to that file.  They get fed 
to hdparm via some script fu at startup.

Michael

On Wednesday 19 February 2003 03:19 am, Marvin Dickens wrote:
> The way I understand it is that ATA drives currently support 4 modes of
> operation. They are:
>
> PIO (0-4 submodes)
> Single-word DMA (0-2 submodes)
> Multi-word DMA (0-2 submodes)
> Ultra DMA (0-7 submodes)
>
> Therefore, using this information, you can use the hdparm utility to
> configure the drive like so:
>
> hdparm -X00 -> restore default PIO mode
>  hdparm -X01 -> disable IORDY
>
> PIO modes (Programmed IO) (disk mode (above) + 8)
>  hdparm -X08 -> PIO 0
>  hdparm -X09 -> PIO 1
>  hdparm -X10 -> PIO 2
>  hdparm -X11 -> PIO 3
>  hdparm -X12 -> PIO 4
>
> SDMA modes (Single-word DMA) (disk mode (above) + 16)
>  hdparm -X16 -> SDMA 0
>  hdparm -X17 -> SDMA 1
>  hdparm -X18 -> SDMA 2
>
> MDMA modes (Multi-word DMA) (disk mode (above) + 32)
>  hdparm -X32 -> MDMA 0
>  hdparm -X33 -> MDMA 1
>  hdparm -X34 -> MDMA 2
>
> UDMA modes (Ultra-DMA) (disk mode (abov) + 64)
>  hdparm -X64 -> UDMA 0 (ATA16)
>  hdparm -X65 -> UDMA 1 (ATA 25)
>  hdparm -X66 -> UDMA 2 (ATA 33)
>  hdparm -X67 -> UDMA 3 (ATA 44)
>  hdparm -X68 -> UDMA 4 (ATA 66)
>  hdparm -X69 -> UDMA 5 (ATA 100)
>
> An example of how you can use the above information:
>
> Determine how fast your drive(s) are running. To do this run the
> following command:
>
> hdparm -Tt /dev/hda
>
> Next, find out which settings are currently enabled:
>
> hdparm -c -d /dev/hda
>
> You'll be able to tell whether 32 bit dma is enabled, if multicount is
> used, and unmasked irq's. A catchall command to enable some or all
> features that you would wantis:
>
> hdparm -c1 -m16 -d1 /dev/hda
>
> This enables 32bit access and multisector reads. These items may already
> be present in a compiled kernel. It depends on distro.
>
> To push further do the following:
>
> hdparm -c1 -u1 -m16 -d1 -X66 /dev/hda
>
>
> This enables unmasked irq's and Ultradma mode 2. They should work well
> but may cause problems on older drives. The udma setting won't work on
> motherboards (eg) lacking a udma66 (or newer) controller. If these
> settings improve your system, you can add the above command(s) to
> /etc/rc.local to be active at bootup. You can also find out more about
> your ide chipset by exploring /proc/ide
>
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Best
>
> Marvin Dickens
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

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