Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2425 mails)

[fountai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Derek Fountain)]

In the Vmware newsletter which has just been sent around I
saw this:

"If you're a Linux-host user, don't forget to also turn on
DMA on your
host operating system. If you have IDE disks, use the
command
"/sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda" to enable DMA. The result:
VMware, and
all your other applications, will run faster."

It never occured to me that my disks might not be using DMA
transfers. I checked my system here at work (SuSE-6.2, 2 IDE
disks), and both disks are using DMA transfers. My Dell
laptop (SuSE-6.4) has DMA switched off. I'll check my
machines at home tonight.

What decides, in a SuSE distro, whether DMA is being used?
The hdparm man pages suggests (under the -X section) that
the drive switches to it's fastest mode at power on, which,
if true, would make the above tip irrelevant. Can someone
fill me in?


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