8.04 super slow on dell 2550

[Jason Joines]

Sebastien Estienne wrote:
> Have you applied all the firmware upgrade to this server BIOS + raid controller?
> 
> Sebastien Estienne
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 17:16, Jason Joines <joines at as.okstate.edu> wrote:
>> Sebastien Estienne wrote:
>>> try benchmarking with a jaunty live cd mounting you hardy partition so
>>> you can test a newer kernel
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sebastien E.
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 27 avr. 09 à 20:15, Jason Joines <joines at as.okstate.edu> a écrit :
>>>
>>>>      I have a dell 2550 server that I want to get Ubuntu on.  I
>>>> tried a
>>>> few months ago with the initial 8.04 release and the install was so
>>>> slow
>>>> I gave up.  I had tried the mini.iso cd, desktop cd, server cd, and
>>>> alternate cd with the same results.
>>>>
>>>>      Recently I decided to try again with the 8.04.2 media and just
>>>> let
>>>> it keep running.  Instead of assuming it had timed out I would go
>>>> check
>>>> on it once a day and after many days it was finally installed.  As an
>>>> example of the slow install, when using the text install and at the
>>>> point where the dialog said "Installing the base system" it took 66
>>>> minutes to go from a 33% status to a 39% status.  Also, by watching
>>>> logs
>>>> it seemed that the package retrieval from the internet was really fast
>>>> but it became super slow any time it was "unpacking".
>>>>
>>>>      The system has a broadcom1 Gbps nic, two pentium III 933 cpu's, 1
>>>> GB of RAM, three 74 GB u160 scsi drives configured as raid 0 via the
>>>> builtin dell raid controller which is using the aacraid module.  I've
>>>> tried both ext3 and xfs as the filesystem.
>>>>
>>>>      This system was running windows server 2k3 and wasn't noticeably
>>>> slow.  I also have an identical system that is running Ubuntu 7.10 and
>>>> it seems to be over three times as fast via these simple tests:
>>>>
>>>>      7.10 System running 2.6.22 kernel
>>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=gigfile00 bs=1k count=1048576
>>>> 1048576+0 records in
>>>> 1048576+0 records out
>>>> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 29.5587 seconds, 36.3 MB/s
>>>>
>>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=gigfile00 bs=1M count=1024
>>>> 1024+0 records in
>>>> 1024+0 records out
>>>> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 29.1349 seconds, 36.9 MB/s
>>>>
>>>>      8.04.2 System running 2.6.24 kernel
>>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=gigfile00 bs=1M count=1024
>>>> 1024+0 records in
>>>> 1024+0 records out
>>>> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 98.4516 s, 10.9 MB/s
>>>>
>>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=gigfile00 bs=1k count=1048576
>>>> 1048576+0 records in
>>>> 1048576+0 records out
>>>> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 93.9246 s, 11.4 MB/s
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      I found this bug report
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/249964 about
>>>> these
>>>> smp systems having the aacraid driver hang under high load.  However,
>>>> this box isn't under any load and I haven't had any of the log
>>>> messages
>>>> reported.  I decided to try the fix anyway so I recompiled the kernel
>>>> after changing:
>>>> #define AAC_MAX_32BIT_SGBCOUNT  ((unsigned short)256)
>>>> to
>>>> #define AAC_MAX_32BIT_SGBCOUNT  ((unsigned short)127)
>>>> in aacraid.  It didn't help.
>>>>
>>>>      I also tried disabling smp via "maxcpus=1" in grub.  It did
>>>> disable
>>>> smp but it didn't help.
>>>>
>>>>      Any suggestions?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jason Joines
>>>> =================================
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ubuntu-server mailing list
>>>> ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com
>>>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
>>>> More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
>>
>>     I booted from a 9.04 cd and ran dd from the installer shell.  The
>> kerenel was 2.6.28.  I got the same results as far as speed is
>> concerned.  However, I was eventually able to generate the errors and
>> hang reported by others in the bug report:
>>
>> aacraid: Host adapter abort request (2,0,0,0)
>> aacraid: Host adapt reset request. SCSI hang?
>>
>>     Is this a vanilla kernel bug or Ubuntu specific?  I need to get
>> this box up and running so if another distribution doesn't have the bug
>> I could change.
>>
>>
>> Jason
>> ===========
>>
>>
>> --
>> ubuntu-server mailing list
>> ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
>> More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
> 


     Yes, the BIOS and all the firmware is at the latest version.


Jason
===========