# slow running gentoo

## rubing

I recently tried running Puppy Linux on a laptop I have gentoo installed with XFCE wm.  To my dismay I found puppy to run an order of  magnitude faster than gentoo....even when I tried a xfce based puppy version.

I am guessing this means I have something incorrectly configured in the kernel??   Any advice on how to remedy my gentoo box??  

thanks!

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## Hu

As a blind guess, are you using the right hard disk drivers?  Many people choose the wrong driver and suffer very bad performance in disk heavy workloads.  If this does not help, we need to know more about your system.  Please provide the output of emerge --info ; zgrep -E '^[^#]' /proc/config.gz ; free ; lsmod when booted into Gentoo.  Also, provide the output of lsmod when booted into Puppy.  When does Puppy beat the Gentoo performance?

Try booting the Puppy Linux kernel with the Gentoo userland.

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## poly_poly-man

 *Hu wrote:*   

> Gentoo userland.

 term is "userspace"

@OP: describe the slowness... like, responds to events slowly? bad disk IO times? mouse pointer lagging behind?

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## d2_racing

Hi, can you post this :

```

# emerge --info

# fdisk -l

# lsmod

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

```

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## rubing

My system is slow when running any application...mouse is usually not a problem.  Even the menus can take a while to popup (they are on auto hide).  

here are the results from emerge --info, free, lsmod, fdisk -l.  

I do not have the file /proc/config.gz

or the program hdparm

emerge --info:

Portage 2.1.4.5 (default/linux/x86/2008.0, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.25-gentoo-r8 i686)

=================================================================

System uname: 2.6.25-gentoo-r8 i686 mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 4 Processor

Timestamp of tree: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:10:01 +0000

app-shells/bash:     3.2_p33

dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7-r1, 2.1.6-r1

dev-lang/python:     2.5.2-r7

dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6

sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1

sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1-r2

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.61-r2

sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1-r1

sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3

sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4

sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.26

virtual/os-headers:  2.6.23-r3

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"

CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"

CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer nostrip sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ "

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise /usr/portage/local/layman/zugaina"

SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

USE="X acl alsa berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri fortran gdbm gpm hal iconv ipv6 isdnlog midi mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly openmp pam pcre perl pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl startup-notification sysfs tcpd truetype unicode x86 xorg xscreensaver zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="savage"

Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

free:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:        237440      44388     193052          0       8792      21376

-/+ buffers/cache:      14220     223220

Swap:       506036          0     506036

lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by

snd_via82xx            22036  0 

snd_ac97_codec         94176  1 snd_via82xx

ac97_bus                1408  1 snd_ac97_codec

snd_mpu401_uart         6720  1 snd_via82xx

pcspkr                  2304  0 

rt73                  214144  0 

snd_rawmidi            20384  1 snd_mpu401_uart

parport_pc             24036  0 

via686a                12620  0 

fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0xe3eae3ea

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/hda1   *           1           5       40131   83  Linux

/dev/hda2               6          68      506047+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/hda3              69        6021    47817472+  83  Linux

/dev/hda4            6022        7296    10241437+   5  Extended

/dev/hda5            6022        7168     9213246   83  Linux

/dev/hda6            7169        7296     1028128+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

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## rubing

I just installed hdparm.

here is the result of hdparm -tT /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:

 Timing cached reads:   102 MB in  2.01 seconds =  50.69 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:    6 MB in  3.53 seconds =   1.70 MB/sec

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## poly_poly-man

 *rubing wrote:*   

>  Timing buffered disk reads:    6 MB in  3.53 seconds =   1.70 MB/sec

 yep - you don't have dma turned on

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## d2_racing

You need to enable that for sure.

Look mine :

```

gentootux ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

 Timing cached reads:   13364 MB in  2.00 seconds = 6690.77 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  330 MB in  3.00 seconds = 109.95 MB/sec

```

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## Hu

 *poly_poly-man wrote:*   

>  *Hu wrote:*   Gentoo userland. term is "userspace"

 

Both are used, though userspace is more common:

> git grep userspace HEAD -- | wc

   2228   21352  203336

> git grep userland HEAD -- | wc

    273    2842   25738

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## poly_poly-man

 *Hu wrote:*   

>  *poly_poly-man wrote:*    *Hu wrote:*   Gentoo userland. term is "userspace" 
> 
> Both are used, though userspace is more common:
> 
> > git grep userspace HEAD -- | wc
> ...

 

wrong - they mean different things.

userspace is the entire set of programs and everything that is not part of the kernel - usually also carries a conotation of the system running (but doesn't have to). For example, the stage tarball contains most of the userspace required to get a gentoo system up.

userland is the most basic system utilities required to run, for example binutils, coreutils, or busybox (if you're into that). These are named by the group making them - the two most popular are the BSD userland and the GNU userland.

Gentoo has a userspace, not a userland  :Wink: 

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## rubing

it looks like i had the wrong ide driver selected in my kernel config, so i fixed.  things have def perked up a bit, but not as dramatically as i expected.  Here is the  result of hdparm -tT /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:

 Timing cached reads:   190 MB in  2.01 seconds =  94.30 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:   74 MB in  3.03 seconds =  24.44 MB/sec

from these numbers i would guess that DMA is still not enabled?  I searched, but did not see any option in menuconfig for directly enabling DMA.  How do I enable it?  

Thx

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## gringo

 *Quote:*   

> from these numbers i would guess that DMA is still not enabled? I searched, but did not see any option in menuconfig for directly enabling DMA. How do I enable it? 

 

hdparm should tell you if you have dma enabled or not, but if we are talking about a "normal" old ide drive ( or pata or whatever this things are called now) maybe you won´t get much more than that. Specially laptop drives are ussually really slow, they aren´t made with speed in mind.

Can you provide a bit more info ?

cheers

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## rubing

It seems to be running pretty well now...i think puppy is just a little faster cause i'm using jwm and seamonkey browser on it.  DMA is indeed turned on according to hdparm or /proc/ide/hda

thanks for all the help guys!

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