# very poor performance with external hd via firewire (k 2.6)

## Säck

I haven't done any speed testing and i can't present you any statisitcs, but my external hard diks is sometimes REALY slow. I don't know why.

When I wanna mount my hd it takes sometimes more than a minute? I just wanted to change the write and read attribute of ~50 picutres and that took about 30sec. that's not normal. 

Sometimes i can copy big files with a high speed to the harddisk, but sometimes it seems that the driver simply hangs. Most of the time when i wait long enough the system reacts. 

Just now i'm trying to copy a folder the the oder harddisk and it just tells me that the harddisk stalled. suddently it goes on and at 4% it tells me again that it stalls.

the format is ext3. could this be a problem since ext3 isn't really all the performant.

i'm jusing gentoo-dev-sources  2.6.3-r1. is there a problem with the firewire module in the 2.6 series? is the 2.4 kernel working better?

hmm, i don't know what to do?

what would you recommend, how should i go on to solve the problem.

thanks

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## Humbled

I'm afraid I don't have a solution on hand, because I haven't tried my firewire hard drive yet.

However, when configuring my kernel, I did notice that firewire is still experimental.  In addition, enabling DMA for hard disks is still in Debug.  I think it's safe to expect poor performance/problems with firewire stuff in Linux, at least until it gets tested and worked on more.

My recommendation is to stay abreast of new kernels and keep up-to-date.  That may be your best bet for getting better performance out of your firewire hard drive.

I'll test it out on my own when I get home tonight.  I've been meaning to get mine up and running as well.  Sorry I can't offer more, maybe someone with more experience than me will chime in.

H

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## Säck

i just downloaded the vanilla kernel 2.6.4 and compiled the sbp-2 module for once with phys dma support. generally it workes well now, it responds way faster, it just seems to work. howerver it forze the whole system once. this may be because of the phys dma support, so i'm gonna disable that and see whats going on. 

I've also in a treat here that the 2.6.4-rc1, or something like that, has better firewire support, however i didn't find that note in the changelog.

I have a friend that uses firewire in linux withouth problem, but i think he used a 2.4 kernel when we talked about that.

so, that means recompile the kernel again, hihi, that's fun.....

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## Humbled

I don't want to play around with potentially messing up my firewire drive, so I'm probably going to hold off on anything experimental.  Especially since it's NTFS, experimental fs (write support) driver + experimental DMA, hmm... not a good mix.

Thx for the info though, I was curious myself... definitely, I'm sure that a future kernel rev will have a lot of the kinks worked out.

H

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## Säck

it seems to work better with kernel 2.6.4

but since i've recompiled the kernel I get the following error when i turn on my external harddisk:

```

cat: /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.o/0000:02:01.2/fw-host0/0030e000e00000ca10030e000e00000ca-0/host0/0:0:0:0/type: No such file or directory

```

what could that mean?

btw i'm using hotplug.

thanks[/code]

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## Säck

****, my system just crashed again!!!! I couldn't do anything. 

here are my last two messeges from the log befor my computer crashed:

```

Mar 20 17:53:46 gentdell ieee1394: unsolicited response packet received - no tlabel match

Mar 20 17:54:03 gentdell ieee1394: unsolicited response packet received - no tlabel match
```

so it seems to be the firewire....but what should i do? I don't really wanna go back to 2.4 since i like 2.6

please help, and should i maybe report a bug, since this seems to be a kernel problem?

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## Säck

hmm, i'm beginning to believe that this is a hardware problem. i'm getting similar problems in winxp. 

that gets really on my nerves, why can't hardware just work. i mean i didn't buy the cheapest stuff ....

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## Säck

isn't there anyone that has similar problems, or anyone that has a working firewire external harddisk that could post me the configuration of the kernel?

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## int2str

Try loading the sbp2 module with this parameter: serialize_io=1

Works great for me.

Cheers,

    André

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## Säck

i just had a crash again. I thought maybe it's because i've used ext3 in read-write mode in windows (<-- i don't know why i touhgt this could afffect it). so i tried using the ext. disk with xfs. it seemed to work perfectly. Just after i read your post. I touhgt, hey, it works, so don't change anything  :Smile: 

@int2str

What is serialize_io=1 doing? and how can you mount modules automaticly with parameters. can you just add them at the end of the module of the modules autoload file you wanna load?

sad sad.[/code]

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## dtor

For what it worth I also have kernel oopsing when transferring data to an external firewire drive. The kernel dies in the interrupt handler so nothing makes into syslog, but you can see the oops if you switch to the console before copying: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=107864180604335&w=2

Ben Collins (FW maintainer) said that the issue has been fixed in his repository but I have't seen anything in Linus' tree yet.

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## Säck

at least i don't seem to be alone with my problem  :Wink: 

i got some date corrupted because of a crash and i don't know what to do from here... 

at least i'm backing up my data right now.

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## Säck

and there's one more

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0402.3/0103.html

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## bakiller

Hey, Im having this same problem right now with my new External Firewire hard drive.  I just wanted to hear if anyone found a real solution? did changing it from ext3 fix the problem? does 2.6.5-rc2 fix this problem? what do i have to do to stop this hard crash when transfering files to my new Hard drive??

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## dtor

 *bakiller wrote:*   

>  does 2.6.5-rc2 fix this problem?

 

No, not yet. You can try downloading development snapshot: 

http://www.linux1394.org/viewcvs/ieee1394/trunk.tar.gz?view=tar

See also http://linux1394.org/download.html

I have not tried it yet.

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## bakiller

well i just reformated mine as xfs and the same thing happened, and I guess 2.6.5-rc2 doesnt fix it im just going to have to wait for 2.6.5 final to come out and hope it works.

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## Malakin

I bought a cheap (~$31usd) usb 2.0 3.5/5.25 drive enclosure and it works perfectly in Linux, I get 23MB/s transfering files from it which is about all get going ide to ide. Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone is in the market for an external drive or is willing to switch to usb.

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## Säck

@Malakin 

Well it depends all on your kernel. It seems only recent 2.6 kernels seem affected.

Hey, if this bug's fixed, could you please post it here. I don't have a linux installation on my laptop right now, since a crash corrupted my data. 

so i was so p***** off that i just deleted my whole linux installaion. hmm, maybe not a good idea, but well, i did it. but i'm missing it already  :Smile: .

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## Säck

I will try once the mm-sources-2.6.5-r1, i'll post my results later. could take some time, since i don't have that much time left to paly around with my system.

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## bakiller

Hey, This bug is still preventing me from using my External FireWire Drive aswell so if there is anyupdate can someone please post it to this forum?? I Just updated to 2.6.5 final and the error is still happening to me.  ANYONE FOUND A FIX?!? Thanks for the help!

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## Säck

Use kernel 2.6.2 

I didn't have a problem with that yet. I couldn't get it to work with a higher version of the kernel.

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## dtor

Ok, the firewire crashes are fixed in www.linux1394.org SVN repository. You can also try downloading patch for 2.6.5 at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=108114162510273&w=2

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## Säck

 :Laughing: 

Ok, i'll try it when i'm at home

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## bakiller

After I emerged the subversion program, I got the ieee1394 dir and put it in the 2.6.5 kernel and it looks like the hard drive is working perfect! Man, I love gentoo!

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## Säck

Seems to work so far, great. thanks

 :Wink: 

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## Säck

Just a note:

Kernel 2.6.6 works perfect. So you don't need the cvs tree anymore. finally my linux box is as stable as i expect it to be.   :Wink: 

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