15 Jul
2014
15 Jul
'14
6:58 a.m.
Hiya,
I've got a Zareason media box
http://zareason.com/shop/MediaBox-5440.html
with 8 GB RAM running AVlinux (a debian flavor);
I use Ardour pretty much exclusively, that and
the vi editor.
The system can record a single track with no
problem. It occasionally fails if I try to record
two simultaneous tracks. If regularly fails if I try
to record four or more tracks.
The complaint is always that the disk system
cannot keep up.
Question: would just blindly replacing the spinning
disk with SSD be a likely fix and an overall good
idea?
Question: what info should I capture and email to
get appropriate help?
Question: what commands will yield useful info
for this diagnosis? (I like the command line but
forget which commands do what other than the
usual suspects for basic use.)
Hopefully, with thanks,
jim in SF
15 Jul
15 Jul
8:08 a.m.
On 07/15/2014 06:58 AM, jim wrote:
Hiya,
I've got a Zareason media box
http://zareason.com/shop/MediaBox-5440.html
with 8 GB RAM running AVlinux (a debian flavor);
I use Ardour pretty much exclusively, that and
the vi editor.
The system can record a single track with no
problem. It occasionally fails if I try to record
two simultaneous tracks. If regularly fails if I try
to record four or more tracks.
The complaint is always that the disk system
cannot keep up.
Question: would just blindly replacing the spinning
disk with SSD be a likely fix and an overall good
idea?
Question: what info should I capture and email to
get appropriate help?
Question: what commands will yield useful info
for this diagnosis? (I like the command line but
forget which commands do what other than the
usual suspects for basic use.)
Hopefully, with thanks,
jim in SF
Hello Jim,
That's really weird, disk IO shouldn't be an issue with such a machine.
Maybe you could test the disk throughput and post the results here
together with the command you used? You could use tools like hdparm or
dd, there are quite some examples out there.
And what is the output of cat /proc/mounts for the drive in question?
Bye,
Jeremy
5:58 p.m.
Thanks lots, Jeremy.
I haven't used hdparm; I see it does a lot (much
to learn, per the man page).
I'm thinking of writing a for loop and capture
start and end time: will that be useful? (Probably
I'll use DASH, Python, and C, just to compare
those three.)
I haven't had the need to use lspci or lsmod or
most other diagnostic tools (not till now, so I'm
mostly lost).
More thanks, I'll probably be able to send info
tomorrow (machine is not home).
On 07/14/2014 11:08 PM, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
On 07/15/2014 06:58 AM, jim wrote:
Hiya,
I've got a Zareason media box
http://zareason.com/shop/MediaBox-5440.html
with 8 GB RAM running AVlinux (a debian flavor);
I use Ardour pretty much exclusively, that and
the vi editor.
The system can record a single track with no
problem. It occasionally fails if I try to record
two simultaneous tracks. If regularly fails if I try
to record four or more tracks.
The complaint is always that the disk system
cannot keep up.
Question: would just blindly replacing the spinning
disk with SSD be a likely fix and an overall good
idea?
Question: what info should I capture and email to
get appropriate help?
Question: what commands will yield useful info
for this diagnosis? (I like the command line but
forget which commands do what other than the
usual suspects for basic use.)
Hopefully, with thanks,
jim in SF
Hello Jim,
That's really weird, disk IO shouldn't be an issue with such a machine.
Maybe you could test the disk throughput and post the results here
together with the command you used? You could use tools like hdparm or
dd, there are quite some examples out there.
And what is the output of cat /proc/mounts for the drive in question?
Bye,
Jeremy
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user 
7:14 p.m.
On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:58 AM, jim <jim(a)well.com> wrote:
Thanks lots, Jeremy.
I haven't used hdparm; I see it does a lot (much
to learn, per the man page).
I'm thinking of writing a for loop and capture
start and end time: will that be useful? (Probably
I'll use DASH, Python, and C, just to compare
those three.)
I haven't had the need to use lspci or lsmod or
most other diagnostic tools (not till now, so I'm
mostly lost).
More thanks, I'll probably be able to send info
tomorrow (machine is not home).
specially written tests are not useful. They don't read/write in the same
pattern as Ardour. If you want a test app, use Ardour :)
7:36 p.m.
Excellent idea! Thanks. So I've already
tested with Ardour as best I can imagine.
I haven't looked at
# ls -lat /var/log/* | head -20
It happens when we're playing and I'm
usually blown out with that.
Given that my experience is satisfactory,
then what can I do to diagnose the disk
drive, controller, driver module, <what_else>
???
Quick and dirty:
* up the RAM from 8GB to more
* replace the spinning drive with SSD
* other???
Continued thanks.
On 07/15/2014 10:13 AM, Paul Davis wrote:
On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:58 AM, jim <jim(a)well.com
<mailto:jim@well.com>> wrote:
Thanks lots, Jeremy.
I haven't used hdparm; I see it does a lot (much
to learn, per the man page).
I'm thinking of writing a for loop and capture
start and end time: will that be useful? (Probably
I'll use DASH, Python, and C, just to compare
those three.)
I haven't had the need to use lspci or lsmod or
most other diagnostic tools (not till now, so I'm
mostly lost).
More thanks, I'll probably be able to send info
tomorrow (machine is not home).
specially written tests are not useful. They don't read/write in the
same pattern as Ardour. If you want a test app, use Ardour :)
16 Jul
16 Jul
12:01 a.m.
On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 2:35 AM, jim <jim(a)well.com> wrote:
Quick and dirty:
* up the RAM from 8GB to more
* replace the spinning drive with SSD
* other???
As Jeremy said, it seems very odd that a machine with those specs can't
keep up with at least 4 tracks. I'm not sure if it will help, but have you
tried increasing the Ardour recording and/or playback buffers to see if
this has any effect?
17 Jul
17 Jul
3:37 a.m.
On 07/15/2014 06:58 AM, jim wrote:
Hiya,
I've got a Zareason media box
http://zareason.com/shop/MediaBox-5440.html
with 8 GB RAM running AVlinux (a debian flavor);
I use Ardour pretty much exclusively, that and
the vi editor.
The system can record a single track with no
problem. It occasionally fails if I try to record
two simultaneous tracks. If regularly fails if I try
to record four or more tracks.
The complaint is always that the disk system
cannot keep up.
it's unlikely that it's a disk problem. Most modern disks can read/write
at least 40MB/sec, theoretically:
40 * 10^6 [Bytes / sec]
/ (48000 [samples / sec] * 4 [bytes / sample / channel])
= 208 mono-channels
Is the filesystem that you record to NTFS? There are some odd issues,
that some have been reported on #ardour IRC. I don't know the details
but with some version (or option) of the linux driver disk read/write
are always blocking with the effect that disk access can stall the
application for seconds.
If not NTFS, the only other thing that comes to mind is bus: Maybe the
internal disk in this box is connected via USB and you've plugged some
mouse into the same USB bus which forces it to 1.1 or something.
Question: what info should I capture and email to
get appropriate help?
for starters:
cat /proc/mounts
lsusb -t
ciao,
robin
8:01 p.m.
$ cat issue
says debian
The distro name is "AVlinux"
I'll take a look to see how the filesystems are mounted
(OH! Maybe ext2 will make a difference?).
On 07/17/2014 12:22 AM, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
On 07/17/2014 09:09 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
It perhaps doesn't matter, but taking care
that the recording disk is
mounted 'noatime' can't harm.
It's Ubuntu so it's mounted
relatime which should be sufficient for
recording.
Jeremy
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
9:52 p.m.
On 07/17/2014 08:00 PM, jim wrote:
$ cat issue
says debian
The distro name is "AVlinux"
I'll take a look to see how the filesystems are mounted
(OH! Maybe ext2 will make a difference?).
Gee, how could I miss that! Sorry about that. I'm sure Glenn is using
noatime so that shouldn't be the issue at stake. Still, the output of
'cat /proc/mounts' would be very welcome.
Jeremy
3856
days inactive
3858
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
10 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Jeremy Jongepier -
jim -
michael noble -
Paul Davis -
Ralf Mardorf -
Robin Gareus