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"Florian D." <flockmock@×××.at> posted 4536AB1E.80004@×××.at, excerpted |
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below, on Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:30:54 +0200: |
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> I have been hitting by a bug for ages, which I want to get rid of |
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> eventually ;) |
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> |
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> It is not possible for me to watch TV via xawtv, while doing IO intensive |
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> tasks in the background. In the majority of cases, it suffices to copy a, |
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> say, 50MB file from my USB-stick to the harddisk to freeze my amd64 |
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> machine (but, funny enough, the sound is playing further on). |
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No way to say this is what you are experiencing without knowing more |
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details than you could have provided in a first post on the subject, but |
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in many cases, such problems are due to running the wrong or a generic |
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hard drive (PATA/SATA/SCSI whatever) chipset driver, or perhaps more |
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often, a bunch of such drivers -- I've seen as many as eight different |
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drivers loaded on the same machine, where only one or possibly two would |
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normally be used. Get the wrong one loaded or loaded before the right |
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one so the right one has nothing to grab, and you don't get DMA activated, |
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and the CPU must be much more intimately involved in every I/O |
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transaction, which also goes much slower. |
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So make sure you have the right one running, and aren't loading a bunch of |
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others, and that DMA is active (merge hdparm and read the manpage). |
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The problem in this case would be slow non-DMA I/O interfering with video |
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DMA as well. |
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The problem could also be a non-optimally configured xorg or extensions, |
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or selecting a type of video transfer that your particular video hardware |
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and xorg driver don't support. |
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Finally, flaky memory, overclocking and/or overheating, or an unstable |
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power supply chain (from the wall outlet thru the UPS if you have one, |
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thru the PSU) can do it. Of course, these are likely to show up in other |
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areas as well, such as when merging on Gentoo. |
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I've had all those problems at one time or another. |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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-- |
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