This tutorial outlines how to speed up Debian by using hdparm, getting sound and video to work, and finally wrapping it up with printing. Read more at Linuxtimes.net
This tutorial outlines how to speed up Debian by using hdparm, getting sound and video to work, and finally wrapping it up with printing. Read more at Linuxtimes.net
…but this was a nice helpful little article. Good to have around.
But, in truth, it might be just as easy to install something like (I know people are sick of hearing this) Ubuntu that already preconfigures a lot of stuff for you. HD params are already optimized, for example.
Still, it is nice to have primers available!
Mike
they procede on installing debian stable and then upgrading to unstable. Might be easier to install unstable in the first place with the new installer, which is a lot better and newbie-friendly than the old one.
The author describes using the -X parameter without explanation. Reading the man page seems to indicate that most drives will start with their optimal value so it’s not worth messing with that value, not to mention the fact that it’s risky. The man page doesn’t tell what those hard coded values stand for either.
Changing the other options though did not improve my buffered disk read speed, and only had a very small impact on my cached read speed. Doesn’t really seem worth it (at least on this computer) to me.
I didn’t mean to imply that using DMA mode was worthless. That is probably worthwhile, even if there is little performance increase in the benchmark.
On my Debian Unstable install DMA appears to have been enabled by default. Is DMA not enabled for the author because he started with Debian Stable?
Or just get Ubuntu and update to the next release every six months. Simple.
BTW Linus said that DMA is enable by the kernel these days.
“BTW Linus said that DMA is enable by the kernel these days.”
Aww, come on . . . what does he know?
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Come on now people, it was a joke.
I read somewhere that you shouldn’t need to force dma settings with hdparm. If you compile your kernel with support for your chipset, dma should be automatic.
I remember when I tried morphix live cd as an install. There was no dma and hdparm wasn’t running. I was told to run hdparm which I did. Without hdparm i was getting 3 Mb a sec, with I was getting 40.
But then I read hdparm at 50 milsec of lag and that you shouldn’t need it if your chipset is supported. Sure enough I compiled the kern with support for my chipset and I got the same 40 mbit without the need for hdparm.
I still have hdparm installed but not running. I only use it to test hd speed.
Well, that’s not the only thing hard drive options can change. 32-bit access, for instance, doesn’t noticeably change the performance of the *hard disk* on my machine, but it makes a very big difference to the CPU load when accessing the hard disk. With 32-bit mode on the additional CPU load involved in accessing the hard disk is negligible; in 16-bit mode it’s significant.
anonymous (velocet) – hdparm is not a daemon. It doesn’t ‘run’ in the background. It simply changes some options to do with drive access and then stops running. Changing parameters via hdparm should have the same effect as changing them any other way, the idea that hdparm itself can somehow introduce ‘latency’ is bogus.
Yes, that’s the reason for my second post mentioning that I didn’t mean to imply that DMA was useless, even if the benchmark doesn’t show any difference.
BTW Linus said that DMA is enable by the kernel these days.
Yeah, but the latest kernel version that you can use in Debian’s old installer is 2.4.18
“Yeah, but the latest kernel version that you can use in Debian’s old installer is 2.4.18”
And that is why people should be using the new Debian-Installer for Sarge instead of the old one with Woody.
I installed Debian using the new installer on two different computers and both times it was really easy.
I used the network install.
*** The only thing I think is really needed is a fast ethernet connection.
It installed using the “testing” branch but I easily upgraded to unstable by editing the sources.list file and replacing “testing” with “unstable” and adding contrib non-free but I didn’t edit the security line.
Anyway it’s been running sweetly for a while now and while I’m still pretty new to linux I do recommend this approach for a nice desktop computer with some really groovy package management.
Peace man,
Jim