Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

[Sissy]

I just switched over to Hardy Heron from Debian Etch. Under Debian, my hard drive was classified as "hda", and everything worked just fine. Under Kubuntu, my hard drive is classified as "sda". Now my system runs insanely slow and the hard drive spins like crazy whenever I open and/or switch programs (especially firefox and adept). I've heard that the hda to sda rename is what causes the problems. Is there a way to make it use hda?

Thanks.

[dibl]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

I've heard that the hda to sda rename is what causes the problems. Is there a way to make it use hda?

No, no, no -- that's bad advice.

If you want to learn all about the "libata" driver and the transition from the old "hda=IDE, sda=SCSI" nomenclature, just Google "libata sdx" or something like that and you'll get an eyeful. The news is about a year old for *buntu users, but maybe not for Debian.

The bottom line is, in *buntu world all hard drive-like devices are sdx. You won't gain anything, and may cause problems, trying to change their IDs to hdx.

On a related topic, "mount by UUID" is the superior mounting method, IMHO -- especially for anyone who ever intends to plug a USB drive into his or her computer. A search on this forum for "UUID" will reveal everything you need to know about it. Here's my /etc/fstab file, which is commented to show clearly what drives and partitions go together:

dibl@cville:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>  <type> <options>    <dump> <pass>
proc      /proc      proc  defaults    0    0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=909106df-3f64-48f7-9860-17e04ae0f734    /        ext3  noatime,errors=remount-ro 0    1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=8244ac7e-8dba-4e51-b252-3033c4c97ea4    /home      ext3  noatime,data=writeback     0    2
# WDC_WD1500ADFD-0-WD-WMAP41478339-part4,    /dev/sda4
UUID=8bd15bd5-04df-437c-b5f8-25897e5ea7b0    /media/images  xfs   noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 0    2
# WDC_WD1500ADFD-0-WD-WMAP41142727-part1, /dev/sdb1
UUID=1a1ffa9b-a8f6-43e9-bb1f-fbc32934018b    /media/disk0  ext3  auto,users,exec,noatime,data=writeback    0    2
# WDC_WD7500AAKS-0-WD-WCAPT0030245-part1, /dev/sdc1
UUID=92c0453f-2a35-40d5-8013-b8870ed66127    /media/backups xfs   noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 0    2
# WDC_WD7500AAKS-0-WD-WCAPT0030245-part2, /dev/sdc2
UUID=f4e36b39-af7d-475c-8990-b2093f558295    /media/music  xfs   noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 0    2
# WDC_WD7500AAKS-0-WD-WCAPT0030245-part3, /dev/sdc3
UUID=eba33247-0dbb-482c-9351-81505a953864    /media/videos  xfs   noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 0    2
# WDC_WD1500AHFD-0-WD-WMAP41413403-part3, /dev/sdd2
UUID=5df77414-98e4-4241-b696-00001ad57fc9    /media/disk1  ext3  auto,users,exec,noatime,data=writeback    0    2
# WDC_WD1500AHFD-0-WD-WMAP41413403-part3, /dev/sdd3
UUID=e11635ae-7dae-45fa-9372-bdc70ef9ec6b    /media/disk2  ext3  auto,users,exec,noatime,data=writeback    0    2
# automatically added, Maxtor_6L200P0-L42WA14G-part1, /dev/sde1
UUID=e731c3cf-e2ff-4692-8353-ede2a3dcb85e    /media/music_bak    xfs   noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 0    2
# /dev/sdd1
UUID=f292aef5-76a6-4455-a4e0-b760e43126e5 none      swap  sw       0   0
/dev/scd0    /media/cdrom0  udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0    0
/dev/fd0    /media/floppy0 auto  rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0    0

[Qqmike]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

Starting with Feisty, the device naming is now
sdx
for hard drives. (It used to be hdx and sdx, both; now all are sdx's, as you know).
There's technical reasons for this, and those reasons have no practical effect on how you & I perceive our Kubuntu OS or its functioning.

That has absolutely >> nothing << to do with the symptoms you are experiencing, though.

[Sissy]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

Starting with Feisty, the device naming is now
sdx
for hard drives. (It used to be hdx and sdx, both; now all are sdx's, as you know).
There's technical reasons for this, and those reasons have no practical effect on how you & I perceive our Kubuntu OS or its functioning.

That has absolutely >> nothing << to do with the symptoms you are experiencing, though.

Thanks; that's good to know. Can anyone suggest what may be the problem then? I did not have this issue under Debian, so I know it has _something_ to do with the switch to Kubuntu.

dibl: Thanks for the advice. My drives are mounted by UUID - I guess that was automatically done at install.

[dibl]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

Yes, *buntu automatically sets up mounting by UUID, for drives that are present during installation.

"Running slow" has so many possibilities .... many of which are unrelated to hard drive performance.

Do you know the utility "hdparm"? It might be useful to run

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

(do it two or three times in succession to make sure the drive is spun up to speed) and compare that output to what Google can find for you. Or post the output here if you wish, and we can compare it to what other folks get.

Then you can also run

top

in a console window and observe whether the "running slow" is due to some hoggish process like strigi-daemon eating up your CPU resources.

Open KMenu>System>KInfocenter and click "memory" and observe the situation with memory usage. It's OK if the physical memory appears mostly used, but if there's swapping going on, that might indicate some issues.

Finally, here are a couple of pointers:

http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/10/0...w-to-fix-that/

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optim...ed-53836.shtml

HTH

[Sissy]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

Thanks. Here's the output from the 3rd run of hdparm:

 Timing cached reads:  890 MB in 2.00 seconds = 444.43 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  76 MB in 3.04 seconds = 24.97 MB/sec

KInfoCenter indicates 13 - 17% of swap being used as I type this message, depending what column I look in (13% swap in "total memory", 17% swap in "swap").

That was before applying the suggestions in your first web link, and some of the ones in your second (I'm not confident enough to mess with /etc/fstab!). After changing the swappiness and cache stuff (and rebooting), it now shows 12% and 16% swap. It does seem a tiny bit faster, but it's still spinning the drive a lot, which worries me.

New output of hdparm:

 Timing cached reads:  904 MB in 2.00 seconds = 451.14 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  72 MB in 3.01 seconds = 23.92 MB/sec

I honestly don't know what to make of this. One question - my system is dual-boot, and Linux is on partition #2. Should I be using sda2 instead?

Thanks!

[dibl]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

OK, wel you're kinda at the bottom end of the range of hard drive performance there. I'm presently using my Asus Eee PC which has a SSD rather than a conventional hard drive and here's what i get:

root@EEE-sidux:~# hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 Timing cached reads:  266 MB in 2.01 seconds = 132.41 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  86 MB in 3.06 seconds = 28.13 MB/sec

So other than adding some memory, I dunno what you can do to speed it up. :P :P :P

[Sissy]

Re: Hardy Heron hard drive drivers

OK, wel you're kinda at the bottom end of the range of hard drive performance there. I'm presently using my Asus Eee PC which has a SSD rather than a conventional hard drive and here's what i get:

root@EEE-sidux:~# hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 Timing cached reads:  266 MB in 2.01 seconds = 132.41 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  86 MB in 3.06 seconds = 28.13 MB/sec

So other than adding some memory, I dunno what you can do to speed it up. :P :P :P

Well, thanks for your help. I'll try adding some memory and see what happens. My computer would benefit from it anyway, I think.