The Linux kernel 2.4.21 has seen a number of cleanups, and a patch which increasing performance of the system under heavy disk IO, especially on IDE systems. Changelog here.
Linux Kernel 2.4.21 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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You mean like my 300MB mbox file? Why is this thing so solw?!?!?!??!?!?
Which change exactly improves the performance under heavy IO load? I have hated recently how my system has been unresponsive under heavy disk activity, and I’d be interested to know which change improves this. One by Alan Cox?
…using this, because you don’t want to get sued by SCO for using their Intellectual Property.
I’m compiling right now on my server… so I guess we’ll see how it comes out… although since it’s not in production yet, aside from e-mail and routing… well… we wont’ know for a bit. But I’ll be compiling on this desktop system later (where I’ve been seeing quite a few problems with performance under heavy Disk I/O…) at first I thought maybe it was a problem in terms of swapping things in and out of memory from and to the disk, and a slowdown in the visual only since it’s using shared memory for video… but maybe the bad performance under heavy disk I/O will explain why mp3s sometimes stop playing while I’m untarring things and compiling stuff — then again, I’ve got no sound on this anymore so I guess I’m not gonna be able to tell either way.
Anyone know, would the latest kernel from RedHat already have these patches applied?
I’m trying to install Linux on my laptop (any distro is ok), and I noticed by trying the rc-s for 2.4.21 that it has improved, but I have a winmodem on my laptop ( Toshiba Satellite 1135-s155) and I can’t find any driver for it. The chipset is Intel 852, graphics works great, but I can’t find any driver for that modem. In windows it says it is Toshiba Software Modem, but I think that it uses the Intel Chip. In Linux it almost doesn’t show up, at least not like a software modem. Can ayone help me out with this please. Thank you.
linmodems.org
and command lspci should help
@ marc (IP: —.forhls01.nm.comcast.net)
Have you tried the “Modems based on SmartLink Chips” driver from http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/resources.html ?
I put RH9 on Acer TravelMate 212TXV.
Problem is that it has damned AMR modem, which is in fact softer then softmodem (it uses sound chip to work).
Anyway, it can be made to work, but my laptop and some other with Ali chipset (like Toshiba Satelite 1800) has problem. lspci doesn’t list modem at all! With other laptops that have same modem chip (AC97), it gets listed, and modem works with older drivers from SmartLink.
My question is this. Should I try new kernel? I’m using 2.4.20-13.9 right now.
Any report on Alpha yet?
Off too compile for my server. (wish they would backwards
port the new sond system.)
Donaldson
There’s no major need to “backwards port” alsa (assuming that’s what you mean)… you can get it right from http://www.alsa-project.org — it’s not difficult to setup either, I think you only need 3 packages, the first two are standar ./configure ; make; make install and the last one you just have to do ./configure –with-name_of_audio_device and it will build that module. The new kernel simply integrate ALSA within the kernel source, so you compile whatever you want with it.
RE: technodev
Compiling Alsa on the alpha is never that easy. Alsa has strange structure that causes the compiler to twist, So far
I usually get it to compile by removing all of the optimizations and compile arund any “intel” code, but usually
it’s an headache, And I think the last time I tried the
modules were not loading correctly.
Leslie
I’ve compiled and booted kernel 2.4.21 just a few hours ago. It might be a little early to jump to any conclusions yet, but after some tests, it seems that 2.4.21 STILL gives me performance problems (my system still hangs and delays randomly when copying big (15+ MB) files between hard drive partitions or cd-rom drives to hard drive partitions (IDE)).
I would say 2.4.21 performance under heavy I/O is two times better than 2.4.20, but STILL not as it was with the 2.2 kernel series (at least according to the load average numbers reported by “top”).
I’m still testing though.
might wanna give hdparm a look into and enable dma, and etc, if you havent already.
Yeah, DMA would be a good idea. I had the same problems until I did ‘hdparm -d1 /dev/hda’, which enabled DMA on /dev/hda.
Give it a shot, it worked wonders for me.
(In response to zrln and blitzoid’s comments:)
Yeah, I even tried using the “hdparm -d1 /dev/hda” trick on all hard drives and cd-rom drives, and it still “ticks” too often and causes all processes to hang for a while…
I usually perform my tests by copying a full data CD to my hard disk while mp3s are playing (xmms). The music skips and/or hangs like the other processes. Very unpleasant. I did NOT experience this with kernel 2.2.19 before with the same hardware setup…
Thanks for your comments though
.
Oh. Really? I always wondered why I was unable to rip and listen my music at the same time. I was quite revolted as even Windows is able to do that without any issue…
I always thought it was IDE and spinlocks personally, (I have SCSI so I’ll try some bonnie test over the weekend.)
Leslie
You can try: hdparm -a1 -A80 -c1 -d1 -u1 -m16
guys, try the kernel patchset from con kolivas, kernel.kolivas.org
its ALLOT better for the desktoip then the standart vanilla kernel
you are sure you didn’t mean
hdparm -a80 -A1 -c1 -d1 -u1-m16
Hi,
I can compile 2.4.21 on my redhat system, and speed is in fact much higher compared to the redhat kernel (PII350, 256MB RAM).
But I cannot connect to my DSL-ISP anymore.
Redhat uses the rp-pppoe driver for DSL-connections.
Anyone experiencing the same ?? What could be the reason ? I am using the same pppd binary with 2.4.21 as with the redhat-kernel. Does redhat use any special patches in the kernel-part of the ppp driver that might lead to incompatibility with 2.4.21?
thanks Boris
Anyone have a good link on how to complie the new kernal
What are the best resources for info on compiling a kernel with the low latency patches? I’ve actually managed to get the Con Kalivas patch to work on Knoppix once, but I’d like to try it on RH9 with XD2 and I haven’t been able to patch the RH kernel successfully. It always fails to compile.
I believe the Red Hat kernel is heavily patched, so aplying a patch designed for the vanilla kernel will probably fail. Try to use sources from kernel.org. I just compiled a kernel from kernel.org using the CK patch and had no problems.
I’d be very careful using non-RH kernels with Red Hat (I assume we’re talking about RH9 here). Their distro kernel ang glibc includes the new pthread implementation, and if you compile a vanilla kernel you may find that all of user-space breaks with it.
In other news, I’ve found that with 2.4.21, compiling IDE as a module fails, at least if you’re using the AMD Viper support. Looks like someone forgot to export a few symbols.
the Con Kalivas patched kernel is hands down the best i’ve used/compiled thus far. i use gentoo, so i just did an emerge ck-sources. to all who have yet to use it, go to http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/ and get the patch. most of the improvements are located in the general setup, such as pre-emption and tick refresh settings.
Compiling ther kernel:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO/
…with low latency patches:
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/Low_latency-Mini-HOWTO.php3