My machine has been running slower and slower, and top seems to indicate lots of I/O wait. I have two ATA discs on a single cable, wired for cable select. The master is much faster than the slave, which seems to indicate a hardware, possibly disc, problem. Trimmed output: $ mount /dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw) /dev/hdb1 on /home type ext3 (rw) /dev/hda3 on /boot type ext3 (rw) Here's the master, and faster, disc: $ sudo /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hda Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77545 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 8625 4346968+ b W95 FAT32 Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda2 * 8626 60915 26354160 7 HPFS/NTFS Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda3 60916 61118 102312 83 Linux Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda4 61119 77545 8279208 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda5 61119 76505 7755016+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 76506 77545 524128+ 82 Linux swap Here's the slave, and slower, disc: $ sudo /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdb Disk /dev/hdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 1 38913 312568641 83 Linux Here are some timings on an otherwise completely unloaded machine: $ ls -l *.iso /tmp/*.iso -rw-rw-r-- 1 jmccarty jmccarty 724559872 Nov 17 22:23 KNOPPIX_V6.2CD-2009-11-18-EN.iso -rw-rw-r-- 1 jmccarty jmccarty 724559872 Feb 5 17:30 /tmp/KNOPPIX_V6.2CD-2009-11-18-EN.iso $ time cp KNOPPIX_V6.2CD-2009-11-18-EN.iso fred.iso real 16m19.492s user 0m0.169s sys 0m5.461s $ time cp /tmp/KNOPPIX_V6.2CD-2009-11-18-EN.iso /tmp/fred.iso real 1m12.639s user 0m0.165s sys 0m5.414s All discs pass fsck with no problems, though the larger (slower) disc takes an extremely long time to do so. I tried using smartctl and it doesn't report any anomalies that I can see, though when I tried running the self tests, the "fast" disc passed, but the "slow" disc didn't complete the test in a reasonable amount of time (over 1/2 hour) each time I tried. This was done with all file systems mounted. I have shut down, powered down, and unplugged, then reseated the all the ATA cable connectors, and reseated all RAM, and the add-on video board etc., with no change to the timings. Can anyone give me advice on how to proceed with diagnostics? What diagnostics does Linux provide which can help me figure out what's going on? Is there a way to get statistics on missing interrupts, for example? Perhaps the disc is not generating, or the cable is dropping, IRQs, and the kernel is falling back to polling, for example. That's the kind of information I'm looking for. Something to point me in the direction of where I may be having a hardware problem. Mike -- p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Oppose globalization and One World Governments like the UN. This message made from 100% recycled bits. You have found the bank of Larn. I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that! -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines