Mark Gray schrieb:

René Matthäi= writes:

...

on my system I run donkey_v59-4-gaps by ed2k_gui with nice (10). After launching checks or re-creates md5 hash keys of all shared files (here many big films). You can then hear donkey accessing the disk and regularly making short pauses (ca. 1 s) - while the whole system does nothing (I suppose): no mouse movement (but it "remembers" your input), even the transfer while copying files pauses. WHY?!

My System: Duron 950 with 768 MB RAM on EPOX 8TKA3 (VIA 686B) Disk in question Maxtor 80 GB 7200 UPM at PM-Onboard UDMA5 Partitions with films ext3 resp. vfat (Plextor 241040TA UDMA2 at SM-Onboard - not mounted) (Promise Utra 100 TX2 with 2. disk) (IBM 40 GB 7200 UPM at PM-Promise UDMA5 - System on RAID-0) (Pioneer DVD at SM-Promise UDMA4 - not mounted)

SuSE-Linux 8.1 with 2.4.20-vanilla

...

From a quick scan of the linux-kernel mailing list there are a lot of bugs in 2.4.20, among the many:

ext3 file corruption bug timer bug with VIA chipset and others reiserfs locking bug (may be vfs bug effecting all file systems) Promise RAID

So you appear to have hit the jackpot on bugs. If you need to run the latest "stable" kernel you probably should be closely watching the linux-kernel mailing list, which you can view at either:

AFAIK the ext3 bug refers to systems where "data = journal" (or the other, but not "data = ordered" as here). ReiseFS I don't use. And I do have a Promise Adapter, but no RAID version. I only use software RAID (althoug I know that there might not be a real hardware RAID but effectively a software driver underneath). But okay - the RAID problem _could_ have to do with my problem. As for the "timer bug with via chipsets and others" though, I appear to have in fact hit the jackpot! What makes me confused is the question whether I have really such a special system configuration?! A VIA KT133 (with _the_ southbridge) and a promise. And then the problems with UDMA and ide-cd/ide-scsi access on ATAPI devices... To me that doesn't really sound so exquisite!

If you have a fast connection to the net you might want to follow the 2.4.21-pre* releases and help them debug it -- according to

finger @finger.kernel.org

The latest prepatch for the stable Linux kernel tree is: 2.4.21-pre3

...

(with TIOCGDEV patch which I think doesn't do anything, and lm_sensors/i2c_modules (don't work either, but no errors: sensors just don't find anything) and nvidia module (works fine)

(I think I'll be going to write another mail soon about the problem that while copying a film from vfat to vfat on another partiton on the same harddisk - maybe relatively strongly fragmented - I only get transfer rates of 0.8 MB/s average. This is to slow, isn't it?!? Maybe all this has to do with each other.)

You know: I didn't want this really: I finally wanted to be a linux kernel "end user" - no probs with the stability and performance (more or less the latter) of my linus kernel. I just want to do normal things that work under windows (and since XP the XPerience "feels" better but is not, at the end). Well, thank you for your comment, Ré