[PlanetCCRMA] XFCE works best for me!

[Joe Hartley]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:29:16 +0100
Spec <specialaka at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> Also It seems the memory management method and paging can also cause 
> problems (only 512mb ram on my pc), I reckon for speed you need no LVM 
> and separate devices for swap file and program files/general data and 
> another one for audio data. 

I'd agree with all of this.  It seems to me that using LVM just adds
an extra layer of handling to the disk I/O that isn't useful.

Last night I had to replace the drive that I do my recording to (thank
$DEITY for rsync and backups!), and I dropped a Western Digital in there.
I just ran hdparm -Tt against it, and am very happy with the results:

/dev/hdb1:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.18 seconds =727.27 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.12 seconds = 57.14 MB/sec

This is a lot better than what I get out of the IBM drive like the one
that failed, though it's still good:  

/dev/hda2:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.24 seconds =542.37 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.67 seconds = 38.42 MB/sec

I don't use LVM, have a RH9/CCRMA setup, and use a tmpfs device for
/tmp, /dev/shm and /var/lib/jack/tmp.  All of the OS resides on a different
drive than what I record to.

-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh at brainiac.com
\Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa