Linux, gobs of RAM, RAID and performance suckage...

[Bill McGonigle]

On Nov 30, 2006, at 11:59, Paul Lussier wrote:

> However, now when backups are run, the system becomes completely
> unresponsive from an NFS client perspective, and the load average
> skyrockets (e.g. into the 40s!).
>
> Does anyone have any ideas ?  I'm at a complete loss on this one.

Have you tried taking the RAM out and seeing if performance reverts?

If so... are the RAM sticks the correct type, properly installed for  
memory interleaving, etc?

Did the BIOS decide to reset itself when new RAM was installed?   
Could the BIOS be buggy with 4GB of RAM (that thing with the upper  
640MB of RAM being masked)?  When you're getting desperate you can  
reset the BIOS to known-good/failsafe/optimized defaults and see if  
anything changes.

I've forgotten some 2.4 stuff but there was a big-mem version of the  
2.4 kernel at one point to work around problems with "too much" RAM.

All guesses...

-Bill

-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
bill at bfccomputing.com           Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/    Page: 603.442.1833
Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/
VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf

For fastest support contact, please follow:
http://bfccomputing.com/support_contact.html