[comp.sys.hp] Help - I have two identical disks - and one is very slow.

bb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian Bartholomew) (02/26/91)

The EE department's server machine has two identical disks, one that
contains the root file system, and one that contains /users:


	# uname -a
	HP-UX kzin 7.0 B 9000/375 kzin
	# diskinfo /dev/rdsk/0s0
	/dev/rdsk/0s0
	             vendor: HP      
	         product id: 2213A           
	               type: direct access device
	               size: 663814144 bytes
	   bytes per sector: 512
	# diskinfo /dev/rdsk/1s0
	/dev/rdsk/1s0
	             vendor: HP      
	         product id: 2213A           
	               type: direct access device
	               size: 663814144 bytes
	   bytes per sector: 512
	# bdf /users
	Filesystem           kbytes    used   avail capacity Mounted on
	/dev/dsk/1s0         623486  211587  349550    38%   /users


The appropriate section from /etc/disktab:

	###############################################
	# The HP2213A is a SCSI Coyote II
	# Total formatted capacity:  663 Mbytes
	#         512 Bytes/sector
	#         56 sectors/track;  16 heads;  1447 cylinders;
	#       Total: 648256 1k sectors
	hp2213A|HP_2213A|hp97548S|HP_97548S:\
	        :64 MBytes swap:ns#28:nt#16:nc#1302:\
	        :s0#583296:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
	        :se#512:rm#4002:
	hp2213A_96MB:\
	        :96 MBytes swap:ns#28:nt#16:nc#1229:\
	        :s0#550592:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
	        :se#512:rm#4002:
	hp2213A_42MB:\
	        :42 MBytes swap:ns#28:nt#16:nc#1351:\
	        :s0#605248:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
	        :se#512:rm#4002:
	hp2213A_noswap:\
	        :noswap:ns#28:nt#16:nc#1447:\
	        :s0#648256:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
	        :se#512:rm#4002:
	

The first disk, containing root, works fine.  It is exported in toto
to the other 7 machines on the network (not my design - don't flame
me).

The second disk, containing /users, does not work fine.  In fact, it
works very slowly.  An 'll' generally takes about 1/2 second per line
for most of the larger (80 entries max) directories on this disk.
Furthermore, an fsck (while it is unmounted, of course) sounds much
slower than the root disk, in terms of head-shaking.  It is exported
in toto to the other 7 machines, as well.

The second disk was added a few months after the first one.  I do not
know how it was formatted or mkfs'ed (newfs'ed?) - which is part of
the problem.

I suspect that a disk's performance may be hurt this badly by an
inappropriate filesystem layout and/or tunable perameters.  What I
would like to see would be:

	1.  Confirmation that my suspicions are reasonable.
	2.  Confirmation of an appropriate /etc/disktab entry.
	3.  Suggestion of some way to read the mkfs parameters
	    back off of both disks for diagnostic purposes.

Thanks.

--
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Bartholomew	UUCP:       ...gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!bb
University of Florida	Internet:   bb@math.ufl.edu

kinsell@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Dave Kinsell) (03/03/91)

>I suspect that a disk's performance may be hurt this badly by an
>inappropriate filesystem layout and/or tunable perameters.  What I
>would like to see would be:
>
>	1.  Confirmation that my suspicions are reasonable.

	They're reasonable, but the tuning has a bigger
	impact on sequential throughput than on random activity.
	The execution of 'ls' would generate little sequential
	activity, with the exception of the load of 'ls' itself,
	if needed.

	My first guess would be an uneven workload on the disks,
	or some strangeness caused by the networking configuration.

>	2.  Confirmation of an appropriate /etc/disktab entry.

	They match what we sent out.

>	3.  Suggestion of some way to read the mkfs parameters
>	    back off of both disks for diagnostic purposes.
>
	The tuning info is much easier to come by than the block
 	sizes.  Tunefs gives you the old and the new values.  Look
	for 4 ms rotdelay and maxcontig of 1 for the best performance
	with those disks.  If they're not right, rebuilding the file
	systems would be necessary to give you full advantage of the
	proper tuning.

	Another thing to look at is the possibility of a marginal
	disk that might be having trouble reading data.  Look in
	msgbuf via the dmesg command to see if a large number of
	I/O errors are being reported for the drive.


>Thanks.

>Brian Bartholomew	UUCP:       ...gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!bb
>University of Florida	Internet:   bb@math.ufl.edu


David Kinsell

paid by, but not representing, Hewlett-Packard