system hangs when copying data to usb device

sxe · 2011-11-12 21:43:25

@SanskritFritz
Look at my earlier comment. I had this too but fixed it by disabling usb legacy support in the bios.

SanskritFritz · 2011-11-12 22:21:40

sxe wrote:

@SanskritFritz
Look at my earlier comment. I had this too but fixed it by disabling usb legacy support in the bios.

Sadly this is not an option for me

sealemar · 2011-11-13 14:35:04

I had the same problem. Eventually that was solved by custom kernel compilation. Please, see my post for future information.

Cdh · 2011-11-13 20:13:42

Indeed. I now have compiled and installed the linux-pf from aur (I used all default settings) and while the transfer itself seems to stall sometimes I have not had any problems with other applications running slow whatsoever.

webdawg · 2011-11-15 19:13:08

Hmm. Any other way to do this? Using archlinux on a desktop this becomes a big problem.

Last edited by webdawg (2011-11-15 19:19:02)

sealemar · 2011-11-16 07:24:00

@webdawg, why? I did a custom kernel config, while Cdh used a default one from AUR. Just install yaourt - "a pacman wrapper with extended features and AUR support", type

yaourt -S linux-ck
# or
yaourt -S linux-pf  # as Cdh proposed

and be happy.
But I'm not sure if out-of-the-box kernel with default config from AUR will help in your particular case

webdawg · 2011-11-16 16:40:23

What I mean is that I know that arch is ment for alot of different systems and system types.

Why is this fix not included in the main repos? It seems like a big problem.

karol · 2011-11-16 17:24:12

webdawg wrote:

What I mean is that I know that arch is ment for alot of different systems and system types.
Why is this fix not included in the main repos? It seems like a big problem.

Not sure what exactly do you mean by 'this fix' but Arch ships vanilla packages, so 'this fix' should be included upstream.

ShwangShwing · 2011-11-16 21:04:44

I have the same problem. I will try to compile my own kernel when I have enough time, but I am afraid that every time I try to setup and compile my own kernel, some of the things just don't work.
Anyway... Does anybody here know what exactly the problem is? It is noticeable when copying to usb, but for people like me without a lot of RAM it seems to happen every time the system uses swap. (And yes, I know that swapping is slower but that doesn't mean that the mouse cursor should freeze for a moment and the music should skip.)
It seems to be related to I/O operations. As far as I know and I've read the when an app requests I/O resource the kernel puts the thread to sleep until the IO can be serviced so that other threads can use it. What happens here is that the processor is like 90% free (iowait) and the system is unresponsive.
So what's going on here?

karol · 2011-11-16 21:13:12

ShwangShwing wrote:

I have the same problem. I will try to compile my own kernel when I have enough time, but I am afraid that every time I try to setup and compile my own kernel, some of the things just don't work.

You can try e.g. -ck kernel or the -pf one, as sealemar suggested.

ShwangShwing · 2011-11-17 08:17:20

I've tried the -ck and it didn't work. I haven't tried the -pf one.

ShwangShwing · 2011-11-17 14:49:41

Oh, and I downloaded it (-ck) compiled. I haven't compiled it myself.

Draje · 2011-11-18 01:20:36

Compiling both the -ck and -pf kernels with their stock config files yielded no fix.

However, using the LTS kernel fixes my problem.

Please try that out let me know your results. It would give a range of kernel releases to search through for changes.

Last edited by Draje (2011-11-18 01:21:04)

sealemar · 2011-11-19 13:36:14

ShwangShwing wrote:

Oh, and I downloaded it (-ck) compiled. I haven't compiled it myself.

That's the reason. I did a custom config. It is true that making your own config is a big pain, but starting with something already patched can be a good idea. I picked -ck up and didn't performed as much changes as I would if I got a vanilla one. In the case of custom config, your biggest friends are

# lspci
# lsusb
# lsmod # from your currently running generic kernel
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

sealemar · 2011-11-19 13:56:01

I modified PKGBUILD, linux-ck.install and linux-ck.preset a bit, so here they are. I thought diff wouldn't be that suitable, because they are bigger than real files and they are hard to see when the version changes.

ShwangShwing · 2011-11-19 17:34:49

Draje wrote:

Compiling both the -ck and -pf kernels with their stock config files yielded no fix.
However, using the LTS kernel fixes my problem.
Please try that out let me know your results. It would give a range of kernel releases to search through for changes.

The lts kernel kind of fixes the problem. But there are a lot of things that don't work there (I haven't compiled it, i just downloaded it from the repository). For example the consoles are in text mode which means 25 rows by 80 columns. The drivers for my video card didn't work (I haven't spent much time trying to find out why). I'll try maybe to compile the main kernel (not the patched versions) and see what can be done.
I've used the ck kernel but it crashes from time to time and some things (like suspend) don't work so I would like to try to work things out with the main kernel.
@sealemar: Do you know exactly which kernel settings cause the problem? Maybe I'll try to extract /proc/config.gz and change just enough things to fix the problem. Help would be appreciated.

karol · 2011-11-19 17:41:34

ShwangShwing wrote:

The lts kernel kind of fixes the problem. But there are a lot of things that don't work there (I haven't compiled it, i just downloaded it from the repository). For example the consoles are in text mode which means 25 rows by 80 columns. The drivers for my video card didn't work (I haven't spent much time trying to find out why).

I don't know what crd do you have, but there's e.g. http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia-lts

ShwangShwing · 2011-11-19 17:59:33

karol wrote:

ShwangShwing wrote:
The lts kernel kind of fixes the problem. But there are a lot of things that don't work there (I haven't compiled it, i just downloaded it from the repository). For example the consoles are in text mode which means 25 rows by 80 columns. The drivers for my video card didn't work (I haven't spent much time trying to find out why).
I don't know what crd do you have, but there's e.g. http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia-lts

... I have radeon 1300 pro. Anyway I'd like to make the main kernel work if possible.

sealemar · 2011-11-20 14:53:17

@ShwangShwing, I don't know which particular settings caused the problem, unfortunately. I made a lot of changes both adding new options and removing existing.
Regarding you 80x25 console, this Arch wiki Uvesafb may help you.

finidine · 2011-12-14 12:16:42

With regular arch kernels, I was experiencing problems (system unresponsive mainly) when copying files from / to USB sticks. Now I installed linux-ck from AUR and the first impression is, this -ck kernel works much, much better. There is no sign of unresponsiveness even with very long transfers.

slytux · 2011-12-15 04:50:48

Does anyone want to test Gorman's patch?
http://lwn.net/Articles/467332/

masteryod · 2011-12-15 22:18:30

http://www.h-online.com/open/features/K … 95236.html

[...]The writeback code now throttles programs which generate large volumes of data for writing to storage media more efficiently [...] This should ensure that the system reacts to user interaction quickly and does not become overloaded by trying to cache large volumes of data, such as can occur with dd when writing to a very slow disk. [...]

finidine · 2011-12-18 20:33:15

Unfortunately, as ShwangShwing said, -ck (and -bfs) kernels has problems with suspend / hibernate.

finidine · 2011-12-21 12:44:49

Tested Gorman's patch: got a crash doing a long backup to USB disk device.
kernel: standard 3.1.5 (pulled from ABS) + the patch

Now I'm testing the "Alternative to the 200 lines kernel patch that does wonders", followed this: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sHRYRuAN

Initially it seems to work very well under heavy IO load.

finidine · 2011-12-24 22:47:27

finidine wrote:

Now I'm testing the "Alternative to the 200 lines kernel patch that does wonders", followed this: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sHRYRuAN
Initially it seems to work very well under heavy IO load.

No.

system still hangs when copying data to usb device. Period.

Arch Linux

#51 2011-11-12 21:43:25

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#52 2011-11-12 22:21:40

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#53 2011-11-13 14:35:04

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#54 2011-11-13 20:13:42

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#55 2011-11-15 19:13:08

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#56 2011-11-16 07:24:00

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#57 2011-11-16 16:40:23

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#58 2011-11-16 17:24:12

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#59 2011-11-16 21:04:44

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#60 2011-11-16 21:13:12

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#61 2011-11-17 08:17:20

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#62 2011-11-17 14:49:41

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#63 2011-11-18 01:20:36

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#64 2011-11-19 13:36:14

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#65 2011-11-19 13:56:01

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#66 2011-11-19 17:34:49

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#67 2011-11-19 17:41:34

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#68 2011-11-19 17:59:33

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#69 2011-11-20 14:53:17

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#70 2011-12-14 12:16:42

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#71 2011-12-15 04:50:48

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#72 2011-12-15 22:18:30

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#73 2011-12-18 20:33:15

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#74 2011-12-21 12:44:49

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

#75 2011-12-24 22:47:27

Re: system hangs when copying data to usb device

Board footer