May also be the kernel's choice of task scheduler too - I've noticed similar symptoms when running heavy on a desktop with Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) and kernel pre-emptivness set at higher levels vs the older Anticipatory scheduler. I'm more familiar with Gentoo but I get the feeling that CFS is being used as default in later 2.6 based desktop distros.
You can easily try a kernel parameter “elevator=…”: Anticipatory, Deadline, CFQ and No-op. Or possibly via /proc/sys - check Google for more. -Euan On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Phill Coxon <phi...@xtra.co.nz> wrote: > On Sun, 2010-04-25 at 16:57 +1200, Solor Vox wrote: > > > Yes, I remember you saying that. But I was pointing out that while > > the workaround was for people using ext4, the default for Ubuntu, it > > was added to things like dpkg which doesn't care/know about your > > filesystem. I've been testing 10.04 beta2 and saw a huge jump in disk > > IO because of the workaround. > > Ah... I understand now. > > I'll keep an eye on my new system too then as I'm also running 10.04 > beta 2. > > Thanks! > > >
