slow CD ripping from moving from 2.4.4 to 2.4.17

slow CD ripping from moving from 2.4.4 to 2.4.17

[Karol Pietrzak]

Hello.
Using 2.4.4 up to, I believe, 2.4.14, CD ripping was fine.  My 
Plextor 12/10/32S (S for SCSI) ripped audio CDs at around 25X, 
even sometimes at 30X.  While ripping, my hard drive would work 
continuously, and so would my CDRW drive.

Now with 2.4.17, my hard drive can't keep up with my CDRW drive: 
everything happens in bursts.  My CDRW drive starts ripping as 
fast as possible, but my hard drive doesn't do anything (0-5 
seconds).  Then, my hard drive decides to start writing, which 
stops the CD ripping process (5-8 seconds).  Now that the hard 
drive is done, the CDRW drive continues ripping... for 4 seconds 
and the process continues over and over again.  This brings down 
the ripping speed down to ~18X, a far cry from the 30X achieved 
with 2.4.4 and very close to the writing speed of my CDRW drive 
(12X), which is ridiculous.

As stated before, ripping is fine in 2.4.4 (which I still keep 
around because of this problem).  What does help in 2.4.17, 
however, is manually entering running the 'sync' command ever 
second or so on another console.  This makes the ripping process 
a lot more "continuous," like 2.4.4.

I can't burn CDs in 2.4.4, however, because that freezes up my 
computer, for some reason.  That happens a lot less often in 
2.4.17 (but that's another matter).

I am using SuSE 7.2 Pro with the latest cdda2wav (1.11a12).

Linux linux 2.4.17 #2 Fri Dec 21 17:14:19 EST 2001 i586 unknown
 
Gnu C                  2.95.3
Gnu make               3.79.1
binutils               2.10.91.0.4
util-linux             2.11b
mount                  2.11b
modutils               2.4.5
e2fsprogs              1.19
reiserfsprogs          3.x.0k-pre15
PPP                    2.4.0
Linux C Library        x    1 root     root      1343073 May 11  
2001 /lib/libc.so.6
Dynamic linker (ldd)   2.2.2
Procps                 2.0.7
Net-tools              1.60
Kbd                    1.04
Sh-utils               2.0
Modules Loaded         ppp_async ppp_generic slhc nls_cp437 vfat 
fat

I am using a Pentium I 233 with 32MB of RAM.  I have an Advansys 
Ultra SCSI card with 3 devices total hooked up to it.

Anyone have any ideas?  Anything I can do?

Thank you ahead of time to anyone willing to help.

--
Karol Pietrzak
PGP KeyID: 3A1446A0

Re: slow CD ripping from moving from 2.4.4 to 2.4.17

[Karol Pietrzak]

Hello.
I am the original poster, and I am happy to say that my problem 
has been solved thanks to Mark Hahn.  The solution was to tweak 
the VM (via /proc/sys/vm/bdflush).

Here's the excerpt from fs/buffer.c which I looked at:

union bdflush_param {
	struct {
		int nfract;	/* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 
				   activate bdflush */
		int dummy1;	/* old "ndirty" */
		int dummy2;	/* old "nrefill" */
		int dummy3;	/* unused */
		int interval;	/* jiffies delay between kupdate flushes */
		int age_buffer;	/* Time for normal buffer to age before we 
flush it */
		int nfract_sync;/* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 
				   activate bdflush synchronously */
		int dummy4;	/* unused */
		int dummy5;	/* unused */
	} b_un;
	unsigned int data[N_PARAM];
} bdf_prm = {{40, 0, 0, 0, 5*HZ, 30*HZ, 60, 0, 0}};

After a little tinkering, this is now in my 
/etc/init.d./boot.local :
echo "10 0 0 0 500 3000 5 0 0" > /proc/sys/vm/bdflush 

Thus, the only modified numbers are:
1. nfract : from 40% to 10% (Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 

activate bdflush)
2. nfract_sync : from 60% to 5% (Percentage of buffer cache 
dirty to activate bdflush synchronously)

I don't quite understand what all that means (my knowledge of C 
is very limited), but it works :)

Once again, thank you.  You've made me a happy Linux user...  
Ripping performance, with these changes in place, is now around 
26-30X, where before, it was 13-15X.

On 31 Dec 2001, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org wrote:

> Hello.
> Using 2.4.4 up to, I believe, 2.4.14, CD ripping was fine.  My
> Plextor 12/10/32S (S for SCSI) ripped audio CDs at around 25X,
> even sometimes at 30X.  While ripping, my hard drive would work
> continuously, and so would my CDRW drive.
> 
> Now with 2.4.17, my hard drive can't keep up with my CDRW drive:
> everything happens in bursts.  My CDRW drive starts ripping as
> fast as possible, but my hard drive doesn't do anything (0-5
> seconds).  Then, my hard drive decides to start writing, which
> stops the CD ripping process (5-8 seconds).  Now that the hard
> drive is done, the CDRW drive continues ripping... for 4 seconds
> and the process continues over and over again.  This brings down
> the ripping speed down to ~18X, a far cry from the 30X achieved
> with 2.4.4 and very close to the writing speed of my CDRW drive
> (12X), which is ridiculous.
> 
> As stated before, ripping is fine in 2.4.4 (which I still keep
> around because of this problem).  What does help in 2.4.17,
> however, is manually entering running the 'sync' command ever
> second or so on another console.  This makes the ripping process
> a lot more "continuous," like 2.4.4.
> 
> I can't burn CDs in 2.4.4, however, because that freezes up my
> computer, for some reason.  That happens a lot less often in
> 2.4.17 (but that's another matter).
> 
> I am using SuSE 7.2 Pro with the latest cdda2wav (1.11a12).
> 
> Linux linux 2.4.17 #2 Fri Dec 21 17:14:19 EST 2001 i586 unknown
> 
> Gnu C                  2.95.3
> Gnu make               3.79.1
> binutils               2.10.91.0.4
> util-linux             2.11b
> mount                  2.11b
> modutils               2.4.5
> e2fsprogs              1.19
> reiserfsprogs          3.x.0k-pre15
> PPP                    2.4.0
> Linux C Library        x    1 root     root      1343073 May 11 
> 2001 /lib/libc.so.6 Dynamic linker (ldd)   2.2.2 Procps          
>       2.0.7 Net-tools              1.60 Kbd                   
> 1.04 Sh-utils               2.0 Modules Loaded         ppp_async
> ppp_generic slhc nls_cp437 vfat fat
> 
> I am using a Pentium I 233 with 32MB of RAM.  I have an Advansys
> Ultra SCSI card with 3 devices total hooked up to it.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas?  Anything I can do?

--
Karol Pietrzak
PGP KeyID: 3A1446A0

Re: slow CD ripping from moving from 2.4.4 to 2.4.17

[Karol Pietrzak]

Hello.
I am the original poster, and I am happy to say that my problem 
has been solved thanks to Mark Hahn.  The solution was to tweak 
the VM (via /proc/sys/vm/bdflush).

Here's the excerpt from fs/buffer.c which I looked at:

union bdflush_param {
	struct {
		int nfract;	/* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 
				   activate bdflush */
		int dummy1;	/* old "ndirty" */
		int dummy2;	/* old "nrefill" */
		int dummy3;	/* unused */
		int interval;	/* jiffies delay between kupdate flushes */
		int age_buffer;	/* Time for normal buffer to age before we 
flush it */
		int nfract_sync;/* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 
				   activate bdflush synchronously */
		int dummy4;	/* unused */
		int dummy5;	/* unused */
	} b_un;
	unsigned int data[N_PARAM];
} bdf_prm = {{40, 0, 0, 0, 5*HZ, 30*HZ, 60, 0, 0}};

After a little tinkering, this is now in my 
/etc/init.d./boot.local :
echo "10 0 0 0 500 3000 5 0 0" > /proc/sys/vm/bdflush 

Thus, the only modified numbers are:
1. nfract : from 40% to 10% (Percentage of buffer cache dirty to 

activate bdflush)
2. nfract_sync : from 60% to 5% (Percentage of buffer cache 
dirty to activate bdflush synchronously)

I don't quite understand what all that means (my knowledge of C 
is very limited), but it works :)

Once again, thank you.  You've made me a happy Linux user...  
Ripping performance, with these changes in place, is now around 
26-30X, where before, it was 13-15X.

On 31 Dec 2001, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org wrote:

> Hello.
> Using 2.4.4 up to, I believe, 2.4.14, CD ripping was fine.  My
> Plextor 12/10/32S (S for SCSI) ripped audio CDs at around 25X,
> even sometimes at 30X.  While ripping, my hard drive would work
> continuously, and so would my CDRW drive.
> 
> Now with 2.4.17, my hard drive can't keep up with my CDRW drive:
> everything happens in bursts.  My CDRW drive starts ripping as
> fast as possible, but my hard drive doesn't do anything (0-5
> seconds).  Then, my hard drive decides to start writing, which
> stops the CD ripping process (5-8 seconds).  Now that the hard
> drive is done, the CDRW drive continues ripping... for 4 seconds
> and the process continues over and over again.  This brings down
> the ripping speed down to ~18X, a far cry from the 30X achieved
> with 2.4.4 and very close to the writing speed of my CDRW drive
> (12X), which is ridiculous.
> 
> As stated before, ripping is fine in 2.4.4 (which I still keep
> around because of this problem).  What does help in 2.4.17,
> however, is manually entering running the 'sync' command ever
> second or so on another console.  This makes the ripping process
> a lot more "continuous," like 2.4.4.
> 
> I can't burn CDs in 2.4.4, however, because that freezes up my
> computer, for some reason.  That happens a lot less often in
> 2.4.17 (but that's another matter).
> 
> I am using SuSE 7.2 Pro with the latest cdda2wav (1.11a12).
> 
> Linux linux 2.4.17 #2 Fri Dec 21 17:14:19 EST 2001 i586 unknown
> 
> Gnu C                  2.95.3
> Gnu make               3.79.1
> binutils               2.10.91.0.4
> util-linux             2.11b
> mount                  2.11b
> modutils               2.4.5
> e2fsprogs              1.19
> reiserfsprogs          3.x.0k-pre15
> PPP                    2.4.0
> Linux C Library        x    1 root     root      1343073 May 11 
> 2001 /lib/libc.so.6 Dynamic linker (ldd)   2.2.2 Procps          
>       2.0.7 Net-tools              1.60 Kbd                   
> 1.04 Sh-utils               2.0 Modules Loaded         ppp_async
> ppp_generic slhc nls_cp437 vfat fat
> 
> I am using a Pentium I 233 with 32MB of RAM.  I have an Advansys
> Ultra SCSI card with 3 devices total hooked up to it.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas?  Anything I can do?

--
Karol Pietrzak
PGP KeyID: 3A1446A0