[rescue] WTB various U10 stuff

Joshua Boyd jdboyd at jdboyd.net
Mon May 17 16:44:30 CDT 2004


On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 04:57:03PM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366 wrote:

> > I certainly did not do that in my U5, but I don't think my performance
> > issues are caused by the disk.  Of course, my U5 is a very lightly used
> > machine. 
> 
> Can you add a second drive?  I bet putting a small ATA drive and using
> it for just swap would help.  You might also want to run the SE
> toolkit and maybe play with some kernel parameters.

As it sits, it has a 4 gig drive to boot from (which has swap on it),
and a 30gig disk for many of the applications, user directories, source
builds, etc.  As that's two drives there, I had to disconnect the CD-ROM
to avoid slow downs related to two devices on a channel.
 
> > I have ideas about sticking SATA drives in a NetBSD running U5, but I
> > don't know when I will feel comfortable spending that sort of money on
> > something experimental like that.
> 
> SATA vs ATA is not the issue.  The issue is sucky drivers.  NetBSD
> probably has better drivers.

Is it sucky drivers or a sucky control chip?  Previous to your
statement, I was led to believe it was a sucky control chip in U5s.

That said, the SATA idea is motivated by more than just performance.
One motivation is to get additional channels into the machine.  Another
motivation is the rather low cost of SATA drives at the moment,
particularly 160gig units.  A third motivation is general coolness.
Otherwise I could stick a PCI IDE controller in for about the same
amount of money.



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