[ale] Disk access is realllllly slowwwww

[Ryan Matteson]

Michael D. Hirsch wrote:

>We recently built a new server.  It got dual 1.4 GHz processors, lots of 
>RAM, and a Compaq Smart Array hardware raid device for storage.  We 
>installed RH 9 on it.  It works really well except for one small 
>problem--accessing the disk is really slow.
>

You can test throughput with "hpparm -Tt /dev/sda1." You can also view 
service
times and wait states with "iostat -d -x INTERVAL."  Does the kernel probe
the devices correctly?

>
>Filename complete at the bach prompt often takes 5 seconds, or so.  It's 
>like the drive needs to spin up (which I'm sure is not the case) because 
>afterwards it is nice and fast for general reads and rights.  But then the 
>next time I do filename completion i a new dir it is slow again.
>
>Has anyone seen this?  
>

I would look at the output of strace and iostat. This should help you 
identify exactly where the
bottleneck is.

>I'm wracking my brain trying to imagine a scenario 
>that explains this behavior.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Michael
>_______________________________________________
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>Ale at ale.org
>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
>  
>


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