swap; udma

Greg Lee (lee@hawaii.edu)
Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:30:12 -1000

For the swapping problem with 2.1.91/2.1.92-1, it was suggested
that the following lines be inserted:

+++ vmscan.c Fri Mar 27 07:14:34 1998
+ if (nr_free_pages > num_physpages >> 2)
+ break;

I tried it -- it doesn't help.

Someone asked whether those of us experiencing this thrashing
had IDE disks. That's what I have. It's a WD Caviar, 364000.
Whether or not this is connected, I have a problem getting it to
do DMA. I get the following message on boot up:

PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 0 function 88, VID=10b9, DID=5229
PCI_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PCI_IDE: simplex device: DMA disabled
ide0: PCI_IDE Bus-Master DMA disabled (BIOS), pcicmd=0x0005, ccode=0x101fa20, dma_base=0x0000

Why is DMA disabled? Whatever "simplex device" means, it doesn't sound
good. "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda" gets me the message:
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted

I have a "TopGun TXPro" motherboard. The AMI Bios setup utility reports
that the disk supports PIO 4, and that is what the bios is set for.

-- Greg, lee@.Hawaii.edu

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