Re: Poor desktop responsiveness with background I/O-operations

Nikos Chantziaras
2009-09-20T17:17:37Z

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On 09/20/2009 11:50 AM, Ulrich Lukas wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>> can you try the following two things?
>>
>> echo 4096> /sys/block/sda/queue/nr_requests
>> for i in `pidof kjournald` ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done
>
> I tried this just now, but it doesn't change things much. I can do a
> more testing later today.
>
>
>> I assume you're using CFQ.
>
> Yes, it's CFQ. (see .config of my previous posting)
>
> Filesystem is EXT4.

I can also confirm total lock-up when copying a big file (Intel Core 2
Duo, Intel X38 chipset). Everything locks-up for several seconds during
the copying. I'm also on ext4. I've been told on various mailing lists
that this is normal, expected and unavoidable so I pretty much think the
only solution is to avoid heavy I/O :P