Arch Linux

Creak

Member

Registered: 2013-10-23

Posts: 89

[SOLVED] Computer hungs up when transfering data

Hi!

Is there a solution to prevent the computer to be completely useless when you copy some files from a drive to an external drive (plugged in USB)?

At the beginning of Linux I was astonished that there were no freezes when doing such things, but apparently it's not the case anymore?
I just had a "this application doesn't respond", just because the copying takes all the resources.
Weirder: if I look at the CPU utilization, I've got quite nothing... 20% tops, with all the cores added together.

I'm using GNOME 3 with latest kernel and open source ati drivers.
I've got an Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.5GHz with an ATI Radeon HD 6870 (in case the graphic card or drivers have some importance) and 4GB of RAM.
Everything is running on one HDD of 1TB.

Last edited by Creak (2013-12-17 02:53:31)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Computer hungs up when transfering data

There are already a few recent threads about this, there's plenty more from years past. Please have a look at them and at least provide some related info.

Creak

Member

Registered: 2013-10-23

Posts: 89

Re: [SOLVED] Computer hungs up when transfering data

Would still be another reminder...
Here is a link to a recent LWN article: http://lwn.net/Articles/572911/

Edit>
A quick sum up: the problem comes from 32-bit vs 64-bit systems.
Might be solved in kernel 3.13 or 3.14, depending whether a fine solution have been found or not.

On a 4GB machine, I did this:

$ su
Password: 
# echo $((32*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_bytes
# echo $((96*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_bytes

And now my computer runs faster than ever! (while copying).

Closing the thread.

Last edited by Creak (2013-12-17 02:53:21)