Linux Users: What are you running?

[Pu-239]

Specify:
Distro
Desktop Environment/Desktop customizations
Browser
Kernel Version
Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity)(optional),
Other customizations/non standard configurations.
Amount of usage
Boot configuration

I am running:

Distro: Mixed Debian unstable/experimental

Desktop:Enlightenment, running primarily GNOME apps for consistency, FinalE theme edited to use Vera fonts, maximize keybindings added.

Kernel: 2.6.4-ck2 (Con Kolivas patches mostly for reiser4 and supermount)

Hardware: PII-450 w/ 512 MB RAM and Nvidia TNT2 graphics card, 40GB WD HDD on a Ultra100TX2 controller).

Customizations: Pieces of GNOME 2.6 from experimental thrown in with symlinks to preserve compatibility, devfs, graphical GDM with hacked theme to eradicate useless language menu, running Zsh with custom prompt, changed root prompt colors to red, local debian repository tree for custom packages, custom iptables script, and some more.

Usage: Use Linux exclusively

Boot config: Single boot, no Windows, spare empty partition just in case I need it and for backup purposes when I nuke my XFS filesystem and replace it with Reiser4.

[Xisiqomelir]

My house is 100% Apple, and I get to be sysadmin by default (ipchains isn't my mother's thing). I have 2 portables (My new toy and my old iBook), my stepfather has a desktop G4, my brother a desktop G3, and we gave my mother my old Centris 650. All of these Macintoshes share a cable modem via the spoofer....

Distro: Debian 3.0 (Woody)

Desktop Environment/Desktop customizations: On a server? Muahahaha no!

Browser: See above

Kernel Version:2.4.26

Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity)(optional): Power Mac 6300/120

Other customizations/non standard configurations: Pretty stock system

Amount of usage: My brother + me = internet whores. I set the server up ages ago and essentially haven't needed to touch it since. (Unlike some other OSes, Linux doesn't get bored and cause problems when left to it's own devices)

Boot configuration: Linux

[phongn]

Distribution: Fedora Core 1. I'll be moving to FC2 when it comes out -- and my university has a nice local mirror.
DE: XFCE 4. I may go to KDE 3.2 or GNOME 2.6 when FC2 comes out. Maybe.
Browser: Mozilla 1.6 at the moment. I'm too lazy to find a Firefox RPM.
Kernel: 2.4.22-2188.nptl (some funky Fedora kernel with a bunch of backported fixes and the NPTL).
Hardware: Compaq Armada M700 laptop. P3M/650, 384MB SDRAM, ATI Rage-M 8MB and 10GB HD.
Boot: Standard GRUB loader with one option.

I use my laptop quite often.

[Crayz9000]

Ok, my main box...

Distro: Mandrake Cooker (post 10.0)
Desktop Environment: XFce 4
Desktop customizations: Not much, change GTK+2 themes periodically when the mood hits me.
Browser: Mozilla 1.7
Kernel Version: 2.6.3
Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity): Athlon XP 2000+, 768 MB RAM, GeForce3 Ti200, 200 gigs total of hard drive
Amount of usage: Daily, mostly in the evenigs
Boot configuration: Space for 11 operating systems available (although getting them to peacefully coexist is a pain). Windows is currently uninstalled thanks to a purely accidental 'rm -rf'-ing of /mnt/windows.
OS list: FreeDOS, ReactOS, Windows 98 Original, Windows 2000 (all four got wiped out, unfortunately), Mandrake Cooker, Slackware 9.1, Gentoo, *BSD (haven't installed it yet), Plan 9 from Bell Labs, SkyOS.


And my laptop.

Distro: Mandrake 9.1
Desktop Environment/Desktop customizations: Currently under construction, will be XFce4 when done. Right now I'm using twm with X11R6.7, built from source.
Browser: ELinks (building Mozilla 1.8a from source with MNG patch applied)
Kernel Version
Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity): 400 MHz Pentium II, 128 MB RAM, S3 Savage, 10 GB hard drive
Other customizations/non standard configurations: Everything. Only the basic elements (kernel, basic libraries) are standard. All other programs have been built from the sources on their project websites...
Amount of usage: My school laptop, used all the time.
Boot configuration: Dual-boot, Linux and Windows 2000 (for course reasons, I still need Windows).

[Ace Pace]

Distro : Red Hat 9
Desktop Environment/Desktop customizations : standered GNOME
Browser : Mozilla
Kernel Version : 2.4
Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity)(optional),
2400+ AMD XP, 512 RAM SDRAM , Radeon 9700 Pro, 80GB 7200 RPM Hard disk


Other customizations/non standard configurations. : Nada
Amount of usage : When I need to fix stuff, or whenever I feel an urge to play around
Boot configuration: GRUB with Windows as default.

[Pu-239]

*Snip*

Oh I forgot to say I use GRUB and my browser is Firefox. Oh, and I have NPTL installed.

Crayz, if you are building everything from scratch on top of Mandrake, you might as well use Linux from Scratch (download coredistro as the base to build Linux from Scratch from, then use the bootdisk to nuke the coredistro stuff and replace it with LFS, or use Mandrake to build LFS). I used ALFS a few years ago, with edited scripts to allow installation from single partition (had 1GB hard drive). You could build stuff on coredistro directly, but it's not optimized (most importantly, libc isn't optimized), it uses a BSD init, and it's missing man pages and libraries, and compilation tends to break. Also, packages are dated.

[Crayz9000]

Crayz, if you are building everything from scratch on top of Mandrake, you might as well use Linux from Scratch (download coredistro as the base to build Linux from Scratch from, then use the bootdisk to nuke the coredistro stuff and replace it with LFS, or use Mandrake to build LFS). I used ALFS a few years ago, with edited scripts to allow installation from single partition (had 1GB hard drive). You could build stuff on coredistro directly, but it's not optimized (most importantly, libc isn't optimized), it uses a BSD init, and it's missing man pages and libraries, and compilation tends to break. Also, packages are dated.

Well, I'm using Mandrake 9.1 since it works with my PC cards. The latest and greatest, at least in the kernel world, didn't seem to help. I still use RPMs occasionally anyway.

[ukamikazu]

Specify:
Distro
Desktop Environment/Desktop customizations
Browser
Kernel Version
Hardware you are running it on (CPU, RAM, GPU, and disk capacity)(optional),
Other customizations/non standard configurations.
Amount of usage
Boot configuration

Fedora Core 1, moving to FC2
KDE 3.2.2
Opera 7.23 Final (Full Version, will be moving to the next upgrade when their done wih 7.50 B1)
2.4.22-1.2188.npt for an i686 on a Gateway 4000DS SP Laptop P4M 2GHz(no frills), 40 GB HDD(hdparm -c3 in /etc/rc.d for 32-bit channels) and custom apmcontinue script so that apmscript will actually work worth a damn.
GRUB and GNU/Linux only!

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz
stepping : 7
cpu MHz : 1991.966
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid
bogomips : 3971.48

uptime
12:00:56 up 5 days, 15:26, 2 users, load average: 0.15, 0.19, 0.17

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1520 MB in 2.00 seconds = 760.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.09 seconds = 19.42 MB/sec

12:03:26 up 5 days, 15:28, 2 users, load average: 0.18, 0.22, 0.18
59 processes: 58 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait idle
total 4.1% 0.0% 2.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 93.6%
Mem: 505428k av, 437948k used, 67480k free, 0k shrd, 86144k buff
104420k active, 122444k inactive
Swap: 1048312k av, 6404k used, 1041908k free 76568k cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
3414 root 15 0 147M 18M 3140 S 2.1 3.7 68:20 0 X
21083 chris 15 0 13448 12M 11068 S 2.1 2.6 0:01 0 kdeinit
3558 chris 15 0 1116 1060 980 S 1.7 0.2 117:53 0 autorun
21139 root 17 0 1236 1236 944 R 0.1 0.2 0:00 0 top
1 root 16 0 552 504 480 S 0.0 0.0 0:04 0 init
2 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 keventd
3 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kapmd
4 root 34 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 ksoftirqd/0
6 root 25 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 bdflush
5 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:03 0 kswapd
7 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kupdated
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 mdrecoveryd
12 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kjournald
67 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 khubd
2707 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 kjournald
3039 root 16 0 948 784 664 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 dhclient
3088 root 16 0 728 724 616 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 syslogd
3092 root 15 0 520 516 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 klogd
3118 rpc 16 0 616 612 524 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 portmap
3137 rpcuser 16 0 828 824 716 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 rpc.statd
3176 root 16 0 708 704 544 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 cardmgr
3200 root 16 0 568 560 492 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 apmd
3241 root 15 0 748 740 552 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 smartd
3250 root 16 0 1496 1424 1252 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 0 sshd
3264 root 16 0 908 908 788 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 xinetd

uname -a
Linux Eunomia 2.4.22-1.2188.nptl #1 Wed Apr 21 20:36:05 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

sudo df -ah
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 36G 6.8G 28G 20% /
none 0 0 0 - /proc
none 0 0 0 - /dev/pts
usbdevfs 0 0 0 - /proc/bus/usb
/dev/hda1 97M 6.3M 86M 7% /boot
none 247M 0 247M 0% /dev/shm

[Pu-239]

Code: Select all

uprecords:
     #               Uptime | System                                   Boot up 
----------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
->   1     3 days, 11:33:02 | Linux 2.6.4-ck2         Thu Apr 29 01:46:48 2004
     2     0 days, 01:41:38 | Linux 2.6.4-ck2         Thu Apr 29 00:04:11 2004
----------------------------+-------------------------------------------------



uptime:
 13:20:28 up 3 days, 11:33,  8 users,  load average: 1.13, 0.78, 0.59



cpuinfo:
 eax in    eax      ebx      ecx      edx
00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69
00000001 00000652 00000000 00000000 0183fbff
00000002 03020101 00000000 00000000 0c040843

Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2

Intel-specific functions:
Version 00000652:
Type 0 - Original OEM
Family 6 - Pentium Pro
Model 5 - Pentium II Model 5/Xeon/Celeron
Stepping 2
Reserved 0


Feature flags 0183fbff:
FPU    Floating Point Unit
VME    Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements
DE     Debugging Extensions
PSE    Page Size Extensions
TSC    Time Stamp Counter
MSR    Model Specific Registers
PAE    Physical Address Extension
MCE    Machine Check Exception
CX8    COMPXCHG8B Instruction
APIC   On-chip Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller present and enabled
SEP    Fast System Call
MTRR   Memory Type Range Registers
PGE    PTE Global Flag
MCA    Machine Check Architecture
CMOV   Conditional Move and Compare Instructions
FGPAT  Page Attribute Table
PSE-36 36-bit Page Size Extension
MMX    MMX instruction set
FXSR   Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore

TLB and cache info:
01: Instruction TLB: 4KB pages, 4-way set assoc, 32 entries
02: Instruction TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 2 entries
03: Data TLB: 4KB pages, 4-way set assoc, 64 entries
43: 2nd-level cache: 512KB, 4-way set assoc, 32 byte line size
08: 1st-level instruction cache: 16KB, 4-way set assoc, 32 byte line size
04: Data TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 8 entries
0c: 1st-level data cache: 16KB, 4-way set assoc, 32 byte line size


cat /etc/init.d/hdparm:

#! /bin/sh
hdparm -c1 -a256 -W0 -S241 -u1 /dev/discs/disc0/disc [increased readahead slightly, 2.6 readahead settings vastly different from 2.4, since setting the recommended -a4 slows things down dramatically, at least according to hdparm benchmarks. How this translates to real-world, I don't know), ]



hdparm -tT:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   320 MB in  2.00 seconds = 159.94 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   94 MB in  3.04 seconds =  30.89 MB/sec (~40 w/ -a512)



ps ax:
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
    1 ?        S      0:05 init [3]         
    2 ?        SWN    0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
    3 ?        SW<    0:02 [events/0]
    4 ?        SW<    0:00 [kblockd/0]
    5 ?        SW<    0:12 [pdflush]
    6 ?        SW<    0:08 [pdflush]
    7 ?        SW     0:34 [kswapd0]
    8 ?        SW<    0:00 [aio/0]
    9 ?        SW<    0:05 [xfslogd/0]
   10 ?        SW<    0:00 [xfsdatad/0]
   11 ?        SW     0:00 [xfsbufd]
   12 ?        SW     0:00 [kseriod]
   13 ?        SW     0:01 [xfssyncd]
   41 ?        S      0:02 /sbin/devfsd /dev
  180 ?        S      0:00 /sbin/portmap
  373 ?        S      0:01 /sbin/syslogd
  376 ?        S      0:01 /sbin/klogd
  439 ?        S      0:03 /usr/sbin/cupsd
  624 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/masqmail -bd -q10m
  631 ?        S      0:01 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
  633 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
  634 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
  640 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
  646 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/ulogd -d
  649 ?        S      0:04 /usr/sbin/uptimed
  666 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/squid -D -sYC
  669 ?        S      1:11 (squid) -D -sYC
  681 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/atd
  684 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
  692 ?        S      0:01 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
  698 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/gdm
  754 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/gdm
  758 tty1     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
  759 tty2     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2
  760 tty3     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3
  761 tty4     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4
  762 tty5     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty5
  763 tty6     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6
  756 ?        S<L  137:25 /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -deferglyphs 16 -nolisten tcp -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth vt7
  766 ?        SW     0:01 [kapmd]
  779 ?        S      1:16 /usr/bin/enlightenment -ext_init_win 16777220 -theme Finale -econfdir /home/john/.enlightenment -ecachedir /home/john/.enlightenment -smfile /home/john/.enlightenment/...e_session-XXXXXX -single -display :0
  787 ?        S<     0:03 /usr/bin/esd.real
  826 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/enlightenment
  827 ?        S      0:33 /usr/bin/enlightenment -single -ext_init_win 14680068 -theme Finale -econfdir /home/john/.enlightenment -ecachedir /home/john/.enlightenment -smfile /home/john/.enlightenment/...e_session-XXXXXX -display :0.1
 2132 ?        SW     0:00 [scsi_eh_0]
 2138 ?        SW     0:00 [scsi_eh_1]
32023 ?        S      0:26 SCREEN
32540 ?        SW<    0:07 [loop0]
32541 ?        SW     0:00 [ktxnmgrd:loop0:]
32542 ?        SW     0:00 [ent:loop0.]
 4703 ?        S      0:00 (unlinkd)
 4706 pts/14   S      0:00 /bin/zsh
 4820 pts/14   S      0:05 bash
 5126 ?        S      0:01 /usr/lib/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-server --ac-activate --ior-output-fd=17
 5979 ?        S      0:05 /usr/bin/aterm -tr +sb -sh 20 -fg gray -font -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-*-*
 5980 pts/19   S      0:00 zsh
 6035 ?        S    114:23 /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin
 6065 ?        S      0:02 /usr/lib/gconf2/gconfd-2 18
 7608 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-server --ac-activate --ior-output-fd=18
13749 ?        S      1:11 gaim
13936 pts/24   S      0:00 /bin/zsh
13939 pts/24   S      0:00 bash
16134 ?        S      0:03 /usr/bin/aterm -tr +sb -sh 20 -fg gray -font -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-*-*
16135 pts/25   S      0:00 zsh
16138 pts/25   S      0:00 screen -rd
16744 pts/26   S      0:00 /bin/zsh
16985 pts/24   S      0:00 /bin/bash -i
17440 ?        S      0:01 /usr/bin/aterm -tr +sb -sh 20 -fg gray -font -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-*-*
17441 pts/27   S      0:00 zsh
24711 ?        S      0:00 (ncsa_auth) /etc/squidpwd
24719 ?        S      0:00 (ncsa_auth) /etc/squidpwd
24720 ?        S      0:00 (ncsa_auth) /etc/squidpwd
24721 ?        S      0:00 (ncsa_auth) /etc/squidpwd
24723 ?        S      0:00 (ncsa_auth) /etc/squidpwd
24898 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
24899 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
 7594 pts/24   S      0:27 aptitude
 7598 ttyS2    S      0:00 /usr/sbin/pppd call provider
 8391 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/1.5/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory:1.5 --oaf-ior-fd=23
 8428 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/evolution-wombat --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Wombat_InterfaceCheck --oaf-ior-fd=21
 8430 ?        S      0:01 /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=25
 8924 pts/14   T      0:00 vi hdparm
 8979 pts/14   R      0:00 ps ax

uname -a:
Linux down 2.6.4-ck2 #1 Tue Apr 20 20:45:24 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux


df -ah:
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
                       28G   15G   14G  53% /
proc                     0     0     0   -  /proc
devpts                   0     0     0   -  /dev/pts
floppy                0.0K  0.0K  0.0K   -  /mnt/floppy
cdrom0                0.0K  0.0K  0.0K   -  /mnt/cdrom0
cdrom1                0.0K  0.0K  0.0K   -  /mnt/cdrom1
/sys                     0     0     0   -  /sys
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
/storage/image        973M  536M  438M  56% /storage/mount


cat /etc/fstab:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system>		<mount point>	<type>		<options>			<dump>	<pass>

/dev/discs/disc0/part1	/		xfs		defaults			0	0
#/dev/discs/disc0/part3	/mnt/windows	reiserfs	defaults			0	0

#ramdisk			/mnt/ramdisk	tmpfs		users,rw,size=2097152		0	0


floppy			/mnt/floppy	supermount	fs=vfat,dev=/dev/floppy/0,--,dmask=0000,fmask=0111,sync,noexec	0	0
cdrom0			/mnt/cdrom0	supermount	fs=iso9660:udf,dev=/dev/cdroms/cdrom0,--,ro,mode=0444,noexec	0	0
cdrom1			/mnt/cdrom1	supermount	fs=iso9660:udf,dev=/dev/cdroms/cdrom1,--,ro,mode=0444,noexec	0	0

#/dev/floppy/0		/mnt/floppy	vfat		dmask=0000,fmask=0111,sync,noexec,users	0	0
#/dev/pktcdvd/0		/mnt/CD-RW	udf		users,rw,noexec,noatime,noauto	0	0
#/dev/cdroms/cdrom1	/mnt/cdrom1	iso9660		ro,mode=0444,noexec,noauto,users	0	0
#/dev/cdroms/cdrom0	/mnt/cdrom0	iso9660		ro,mode=0444,noexec,noauto,users	0	0

/dev/discs/disc0/part2	none		swap		sw,pri=1			0	0
/var/local/swap/swap	none		swap		sw,pri=0			0	0
proc			/proc		proc		defaults			0	0
sys			/sys		sysfs		defaults			0	0



cat /boot/grub/menu.lst:
default 0
timeout 2

title Debian GNU/Linux (Sid)
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz apm=on broken-psr realmode-power-off vga=0x307 video=rivafb:off ide=reverse ide0=ata66 hde=ide-scsi hdh=ide-scsi root=/dev/hda1 devfs=nomount ro

title Memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/memtest86+.bin

[ukamikazu]

[quote="Pu-239"][/quote]

Code: Select all

Dude, nice. Tell me more about your HDD & Controller and how you figured yourself for -a512 for your reads, please.

Oh, BTW for everyone else, I forgot (Thanks for reminding me Pu*):

Code: Select all

cat fstab
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hda3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/scd0       /mnt/cdrom      auto    ro,noauto,user,exec     0 0

[Pu-239]

Using 40 Western Digital 7200RPM hard drive.
From hdparm -I:

Code: Select all

/dev/discs/disc0/disc:

ATA device, with non-removable media
	Model Number:       WDC WD400BB-00CAA1                      
	Serial Number:      WD-WMA8F2790235
Firmware Revision:  17.07W17
Standards:
	Supported: 5 4 3 2 
	Likely used: 6
Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	16383	16383
	heads		16	16
	sectors/track	63	63
	--
	CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
	LBA    user addressable sectors:   78165360
	device size with M = 1024*1024:       38166 MBytes
	device size with M = 1000*1000:       40020 MBytes (40 GB)
Capabilities:
	LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
	bytes avail on r/w long: 40	Queue depth: 1
	Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
	R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16	Current = 16
	Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 128
	DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 

	     Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
	PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
	     Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
	Enabled	Supported:
	   *	READ BUFFER cmd
	   *	WRITE BUFFER cmd
	   *	Host Protected Area feature set
	   *	Look-ahead
		Write cache
	   *	Power Management feature set
		Security Mode feature set
	   *	SMART feature set
	   *	Device Configuration Overlay feature set 
	   *	Automatic Acoustic Management feature set 
		SET MAX security extension
	   *	DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd
	   *	SMART self-test 
	   *	SMART error logging 
Security: 
		supported
	not	enabled
	not	locked
	not	frozen
	not	expired: security count
	not	supported: enhanced erase
HW reset results:
	CBLID- above Vih
	Device num = 0 determined by CSEL
Checksum: correct

Controller is an Ultra100TX2 (I think). lspci shows

Code: Select all

00:0b.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20268 (rev 02)

Found out about the

Code: Select all

 "idex=ata66"           : informs the interface that it has an 80c cable
                          for chipsets that are ATA-66 capable, but the
                          ability to bit test for detection is currently
                          unknown.

(/usr/src/[kernel directory]/Documentation/ide.txt) option when googling, after hdparm -X didn't have any effect (this seems to make the biggest difference, if the -a is left to default). The -a option I adjusted (explicitly set it to the recommended value), then when I upgraded to 2.6.4 the reads slowed down, since the kernel apparently interprets the value differently, so I experimented beyond recommended values... 512 seems to be optimal for max hdparm reads (may not be for actual usage, so lowered to 256 just in case... then again, caching in ram may make this irrelavant, since -a adjusts readahead, so sustained throughput may not be as high.

I just dded 200 MB from a reiser4 disk image to the ramdisk, and it took 28.5 seconds, so it's about 7 MB/s sustained... then again, it was 2 seconds for 40MB, and I'm doubtful anyone would transfer more than that on a regular basis. I'm also not sure if tmpfs sends things to swap, which would really screw up the 200MB test(EDIT: tried by dding to /dev/null, 11 seconds, 18MB/s, so yes, it probably was an issue with swap. Lowering -a to 72 doesn't make much difference when transfering small quantities from disk image to ramdisk though however, so I just switched back to 512. )