[opensuse] why system is so slow when burning DVD?
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Dear list: When burning DVD with growisofs at speed 5x the SuSE 10.2 system become very slow, most notably mouse is moving slow, for example: I type a letter in this email (right now it's burning DVD) the letter appear 0.5 to 1.5 seconds after I typed. First I thought maybe burning DVD is very CPU consuming, but later I see not even 15% CPU resource is being used, also I have Pentium D, that is there should be another CPU that's free, even if a process takes up 100% CPU. Memory? Still more than 700MB free memory (a.k.a 700MB cached memory) Then I think it's maybe IDE HDD cannot be efficient if two processes are reading it the same time (growisofs is reading it, thus any other application using HDD become the second application). But, I am wrong! The source data of the DVD is on a NFS share so IDE bandwidth is not taken up. Later I think is it possible it's that PCI bandwidth is used up? The network card is on the motherboard, there are 12 video chip on this computer (grouped by 4 on total of 3 PCI bus), although only 3 of the monitors are active (others are in power-saving mode). I don't know any tool I can use to test if PCI bandwidth is used up and video display is being slowed down. But... if instead of burning DVD I do 'cat /mnt/nfs/data.iso > /dev/null', the network is at full speed (8MBytes/s) and the system is not slowed down (mouse/keyboard still very fast). So.. what's the real bottle-neck that slows my system down when burning DVD? Not a big problem because I can tolerate this slow, only curious... P.S. diagnostic information:
uptime 4:00pm up 18:02, 9 users, load average: 3.14, 3.05, 2.36 free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2019 1891 128 0 16 719 -/+ buffers/cache: 1154 864 Swap: 2055 0 2054 top top - 16:01:39 up 18:04, 9 users, load average: 3.24, 3.10, 2.30 Tasks: 263 total, 1 running, 256 sleeping, 0 stopped, 6 zombie Cpu(s): 14.4%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.1%id, 0.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 2068136k total, 1990408k used, 77728k free, 18008k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 252k used, 2104220k free, 756212k cached
-- Zhang Weiwu Real Softservice http://www.realss.com +86 592 2091112 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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So.. what's the real bottle-neck that slows my system down when burning DVD? Not a big problem because I can tolerate this slow, only curious...
I see this as well, under windows. :-) (using nero) I always believed it has something to do with the burn protection feature. Or the burning process taking VERY high priority (to avoid buffer underruns etc) and therefore the rest becomes really slow. Whatever it is: it's not specific to linux I think. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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But... if instead of burning DVD I do 'cat /mnt/nfs/data.iso > /dev/null', the network is at full speed (8MBytes/s) This is not an identical test as the data is just read then disposed of. You could have a look at the wikipedia article on device bandwidths and do some sums http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths I'd check things like the DMA mode of the drive, the backplane bus and card types and versions, the north and south bridge types, the memory speed and type, the FSB speed etc., to see what the theoretical capacity is and record the actual throughput to see if it approaches those values. I'm not sure what hardware you have, so you'll have to consider
Zhang Weiwu wrote: the data's path yourself. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On Thu, 2007-04-19 at 13:04 +0100, Russell Jones wrote:
Zhang Weiwu wrote:
But... if instead of burning DVD I do 'cat /mnt/nfs/data.iso > /dev/null', the network is at full speed (8MBytes/s)
This is not an identical test as the data is just read then disposed of. You could have a look at the wikipedia article on device bandwidths and do some sums http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths I'd check things like the DMA mode of the drive, the backplane bus and card types and versions, the north and south bridge types, the memory speed and type, the FSB speed etc., to see what the theoretical capacity is and record the actual throughput to see if it approaches those values. I'm not sure what hardware you have, so you'll have to consider the data's path yourself.
Thanks a lot for the link and suggestions. I think it's probably the PCI bandwidth problem now because now I burn a DVD from an image on local harddisk, the result is the screen is no longer slow (mouse and keyboard respond fast). And any application which would read harddisk starts slow, but once started, it's usually fast as well. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On 4/19/07, Zhang Weiwu
I'd check things like the DMA mode of the drive, the backplane bus and
As Russell said, check the DMA setting of the drives. Are they all enabled? -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny) Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Thursday 2007-04-19 at 16:03 +0800, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
First I thought maybe burning DVD is very CPU consuming, but later I see not even 15% CPU resource is being used, also I have Pentium D, that is there should be another CPU that's free, even if a process takes up 100% CPU.
We talked a few days back about cpu usage applet showing the iowait percent, too.
Memory? Still more than 700MB free memory (a.k.a 700MB cached memory)
Then I think it's maybe IDE HDD cannot be efficient if two processes are reading it the same time (growisofs is reading it, thus any other application using HDD become the second application). But, I am wrong! The source data of the DVD is on a NFS share so IDE bandwidth is not taken up.
What about network bandwidth? You are burning at 5x. I don't recollect what bandwidth is that... Ah, wikipedia to the rescue: 55.40 Mbit/s. That's about half the 100 Mbps bandwidth. Adding whatever the nfs adds, maybe you are close to the limit. Now, the network card might be taxing the system. I don't suppose they can work in polling mode? No, not possible, cpu usage would be high then.
Later I think is it possible it's that PCI bandwidth is used up? The network card is on the motherboard, there are 12 video chip on this computer (grouped by 4 on total of 3 PCI bus), although only 3 of the monitors are active (others are in power-saving mode).
That's a fair bit! :-)
So.. what's the real bottle-neck that slows my system down when burning DVD? Not a big problem because I can tolerate this slow, only curious...
You could perhaps recompile the kernel and adjust some parameters that affect responsiveness. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGJ7n0tTMYHG2NR9URAk9dAJ97d5W6kA3SrjzmM6CTF7w3fwDEWACfXDhK w1PCzqbMNIS/f4JFyaW6wU0= =ISRp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (5)
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Carlos E. R.
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mourik jan
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Russell Jones
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Sunny
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Zhang Weiwu