turning on DMA

Forum: HD Install
Topic: turning on DMA
started by: pituljica

Posted by pituljica on Feb. 20 2006,11:29

how can I turn DMA on, during installation or after it. I need it to run some multimedia files. It works just fine when I boot it from a cd with dsl dma comand, but once I start it from hdd it shows dma turn off.

thanx for help

___
"O∣"
[~]

Posted by Guest on Feb. 20 2006,13:33

If you can boot to dsl after hd install, then this next thing should work:
/sbin/hdparm -c3 -d1 -m16 -ki /dev/hda

You need to be root to do that.

Posted by starcannon on Feb. 22 2006,01:56

can also append it to your LiLo config then run LiLo as Root, or append it to Grub config file.

Rob

Posted by Xilinx on Feb. 22 2006,11:03

hdparm -c3 -d1 /dev/hda

Is an Amazing improved towards my disk performance!

I checked the speed with doing

Code Sample

dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/test.dd bs=1M count=100

dd gave me , 50Mbyte/s transfer rate

Without DMA enabled -> 5.4Mbyte/s ,

Speed x10

Posted by starcannon on Feb. 22 2006,20:05

More hdparm settings and a great primer on the subject < here >, I already had dma going but there is so much more you can do to squeeze a very nice bit of speed out of that hard drive check it out here < O'Reily hdparm Tutorial >

Enjoy,
Rob

Posted by pituljica on Feb. 23 2006,14:01

thanx guys for replay. I will give it a try.

Posted by mtto on Mar. 24 2006,20:06

Quote (starcannon @ Feb. 21 2006,20:56)

can also append it to your LiLo config then run LiLo as Root

I am a newbie on linux and DSL... could you please tell me a step by step procedure to enable dma at boot automatically? I've performed an HD installation, but after booting a message appears stating that dma hasn't been activated...

thank you very much!

Posted by linuxlizard on Mar. 30 2006,02:13

Can someone please walkthrough how to make the stuff in the O'Reily tutorial permenent with reboot?
I'm not sure what file(s) he means in /etc/ folder to put the line in exactly. DSL has a bunch of rc*.d/ folders- are those the place? Which file? Can the line just go in lilo somewhere? Thanks!

Posted by Guest on April 02 2006,14:16

I dont know what lines you are going to apply but try to write it to bootlocal.sh(is it bootlocal.sh?) file. It might work.

Posted by supalavo on Sep. 15 2006,11:30

I just added "dma" at the end of the "append=..." line in the /etc/lilo.conf file.
It seems to work fine.
(sure hdparm lets you do much more than only enabling dma)

I hope it's of some use...