Re: [Sheflug] Disk Activity Problems

[Alex Hudson <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2001-11-20 at 13:07, José Luis Gómez Dans wrote:
> 	Erm... I was quite shocked to read that in the newer kernels,
> hdparm doesn't produce incredible results, as the new IDE driver
> autotunes to get the best performance.

The post you quoted says it's not 100% - e.g., the drivers won't turn on
DMA automatically on some chipsets. This appears to be what has happened
here - apparently, the hdparm tune worked. I have to say, in my
experience (even pre-2.4) messing with hdparm didn't change figures
hugely: there was obviously some difference, but not any worth anything
really.

It probably applies to the majority of chipsets, except maybe those
really old or really new. I have to say, though, I'm a big fan of
automatic detection, tuning, etc., and wish Linux had more of it. I'm
currently using the Ximian desktop (wandering slightly O.T. now ;) on
Debian Stable/Testing/Sid (depending which packages you look at!), and
it is incredible. Evolution 0.99.0 (beta 1?) is incredible, Nautilus is
great, and compared to previous times I've used it, it's actually
_fast_. That is to say, I'm able to work happily, and there doesn't seem
to be anything which churns and annoys me - I don't actively get annoyed
by most of the system, which must be a good thing. We're going to be
getting to the stage where it /really/ /is/ easy to use, and
self-configuration and self-maintaining software is definitely the way
forwards.

Cheers,

Alex.

PS. I've also just started using Gnu Privacy Assistant (GPA) - if you've
not used it yet, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

PGP signature