I am writing this post to provide some statistics on athcool + sata_sil usage. The results are horrible.<\/p>\n
Athcool<\/a> is a small utility, enabling\/disabling Powersaving mode for AMD Athlon\/Duron processors. WARNING<\/strong>: Depending on your motherboard and\/or hardware components, enabling powersaving mode may cause:<\/p>\n * noisy or distorted sound playback The Gentoo ebuild also has these warnings:<\/p>\n \tewarn “WARNING: Depending on your motherboard and\/or hardware components,” Ignoring all these warning I was using athcool for years on my old desktop box filled with 2 IDE disks. Never had any real problem at all, except for a some performance loss. The problem appeared when I first used a sata disk on motherboard’s, Gigabyte GA-7VAXP-A Ulta, sata controller which uses the sata_sil module. b) dd to SATA<\/strong><\/em> 2) athcool on<\/strong> a) dd to SATA<\/strong><\/em> I don’t think that’s what the programmer of athcool had in mind when he was talking about degraded performance…I think this is a bug. I can accept a 20% loss but not an 80% loss of performance. By the way, these tests were performed on ext3, but the same results appear with reiserfs as well.<\/p>\n This “bug” took me a while to figure out. I had my sata disk crawling for a long time before I thought of disabling athcool (yeah yeah I know it should have been the first thing to do…). I initially thought on posting the “bug” to the Gentoo bugzilla but while searching it I came up with this: Dear Internets, I am writing this post to provide some statistics on athcool + sata_sil usage. The results are horrible. Athcool is a small utility, enabling\/disabling Powersaving mode for AMD Athlon\/Duron processors. The homepage of the utility has a big fat warning as well: WARNING: Depending on your motherboard and\/or hardware components, enabling powersaving mode may cause: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[34,37,38,36,41,39,601,43,595,42,35,44,45,40],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gentoo","category-linux","tag-athcool","tag-bug","tag-bug-report","tag-bugzilla","tag-dd","tag-ext3","tag-gentoo","tag-ide","tag-linux","tag-performance","tag-powesaving","tag-sata","tag-sata_sil","tag-vmstat"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":9744,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.void.gr\/kargig\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe homepage of the utility has a big fat warning as well:<\/p>\n
\n * a slowdown in harddisk performance
\n * system locks or instability\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\tewarn “enabling powersaving mode may cause:”
\n\tewarn ” * noisy or distorted sound playback”
\n\tewarn ” * a slowdown in harddisk performance”
\n\tewarn ” * system locks or unpredictable behavior”
\n\tewarn ” * file system corruption”
\n\tewarn “If you met those problems, you should not use athcool. Please use”
\n\tewarn “athcool AT YOUR OWN RISK!”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\nHere are some tests using dd and vmstat. The two commands were run on different terminals at the same time:
\n1) athcool off<\/strong>
\na) dd to IDE<\/strong><\/em>
\n(TERMINAL 1) user@box:~% vmstat 1
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n 0 0 0 392296 19272 663892 0 0 0 56 260 332 0 0 100 0
\n 1 0 0 813648 19344 245960 0 0 4 64604 486 849 4 58 14 24
\n 0 1 0 769380 19388 289680 0 0 0 44032 399 890 3 30 0 67
\n 0 2 0 769876 19388 290704 0 0 0 4 368 594 1 3 0 96
\n 0 3 0 708372 19460 351120 0 0 0 40632 347 589 2 46 0 52
\n 0 1 0 674272 19492 383928 0 0 0 53936 471 821 1 27 0 72
\n 0 1 0 655796 19508 401744 0 0 0 17640 376 651 1 13 0 86
\n 0 1 0 588712 19572 466880 0 0 0 65544 469 1024 9 40 0 51
\n 1 1 0 579412 19584 478072 0 0 0 6148 368 852 5 8 0 87
\n 0 2 0 504516 19664 550856 0 0 0 79104 414 817 3 52 0 45
\n 1 0 0 453800 19712 600040 0 0 0 45420 350 616 4 30 0 66
\n 0 1 0 414740 19748 637952 0 0 0 40872 401 700 3 26 0 71
\n 0 1 0 367248 19792 684064 0 0 0 46112 357 619 5 32 0 63
\n 1 1 0 360552 19804 693280 0 0 0 7240 421 795 2 8 0 90
\n 2 1 0 268668 19896 782368 0 0 0 84768 385 722 5 65 0 30
\n 2 1 0 230724 19932 819248 0 0 0 43672 378 598 2 27 0 71
\n 1 1 0 184224 19976 864328 0 0 0 45080 349 587 5 27 0 68
\n 0 1 0 142932 20016 904288 0 0 0 39960 369 653 1 33 0 66
\n 1 1 0 136608 20032 913928 0 0 0 6400 337 523 2 11 0 87
\n 0 1 0 46708 20120 1000568 0 0 0 90360 387 626 4 61 0 35
\n 0 1 0 26508 14348 1025136 0 0 0 44048 346 633 1 29 0 70
\n 0 1 0 23404 13368 1028324 0 0 0 42016 363 638 2 26 0 72
\n 0 1 4 23776 11816 1028108 0 0 0 43048 336 631 0 30 0 70
\n 1 1 4 24024 11000 1031428 0 0 0 26796 391 663 4 25 0 71
\n 0 0 4 23652 11028 1032324 0 0 0 16836 336 648 2 14 18 66
\n 0 0 4 23776 11028 1032324 0 0 0 0 278 397 1 0 99 0
\n(TERMINAL 2) user@box:~%dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/path\/to\/parition\/on\/IDE\/disk\/file bs=1024 count=1000000
\n1000000+0 records in
\n1000000+0 records out
\n1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 22.8884 s, 44.7 MB\/s
\n<\/code>
\nPretty decent performace.<\/p>\n
\n(TERMINAL 1) user@box:~% vmstat 1
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n 0 0 4 738008 21872 317948 0 0 0 0 308 427 2 0 98 0
\n 0 0 4 738008 21880 317948 0 0 0 48 268 342 0 1 99 0
\n 3 0 4 722508 21916 334312 0 0 4 8456 320 491 3 11 84 2
\n 1 0 4 647612 22008 407372 0 0 0 80844 374 762 9 52 0 39
\n 0 1 4 624796 22032 429996 0 0 0 22528 389 465 0 17 0 83
\n 1 0 4 557836 22096 495032 0 0 0 64520 361 395 3 50 0 47
\n 1 0 4 512576 22136 539012 0 0 0 44032 386 548 5 33 0 62
\n 0 2 4 473640 22176 579080 0 0 0 38916 353 488 2 31 0 67
\n 2 0 4 448220 22220 605548 0 0 0 23156 399 434 3 20 0 77
\n 0 1 4 381880 22280 669192 0 0 0 60492 353 374 2 48 0 50
\n 1 0 4 331784 22328 717848 0 0 0 49272 388 431 3 36 0 61
\n 1 2 4 286648 22372 761716 0 0 0 43120 345 366 4 33 0 63
\n 0 3 4 249696 22408 799240 0 0 0 46832 391 437 2 30 0 68
\n 1 3 4 212124 22448 837352 0 0 0 28460 351 446 3 29 0 68
\n 0 2 4 161160 22496 886304 0 0 0 58856 439 479 3 39 0 58
\n 0 2 4 115652 22540 930336 0 0 0 44032 355 523 2 32 0 66
\n 0 2 4 68036 22584 976416 0 0 0 46080 426 699 6 32 0 62
\n 1 1 4 22548 22628 1020476 0 0 0 44028 366 590 15 29 0 56
\n 2 2 4 23032 22672 1019420 0 0 0 42012 386 1082 40 36 0 24
\n 0 2 4 24272 20772 1019388 0 0 0 45116 360 779 16 36 0 48
\n 1 1 184 23652 16948 1022416 0 0 0 33968 365 446 20 30 0 50
\n 0 2 184 23280 16668 1022620 0 0 0 50188 369 505 3 35 0 62
\n 0 2 184 24520 16688 1020540 0 4 0 44036 376 458 9 36 0 55
\n 0 2 184 27868 16632 1022072 0 0 0 25908 459 441 5 19 0 76
\n 1 1 184 23652 6796 1036996 0 0 0 37820 386 472 3 30 0 67
\n 0 0 184 24520 6084 1037356 0 0 0 16580 342 424 4 15 1 80
\n 0 0 184 24644 6084 1037356 0 0 0 0 294 374 1 0 99 0
\n(TERMINAL 2) user@box:~%dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/path\/to\/parition\/on\/SATA\/disk\/file bs=1024 count=1000000
\n1000000+0 records in
\n1000000+0 records out
\n1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 22.2838 s, 46.0 MB\/s
\n<\/code>
\nSata was a bit faster, as expected.<\/p>\n
\na) dd to IDE<\/strong><\/em>
\n(TERMINAL 1) user@box:~% vmstat 1
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
\n 2 0 184 119536 7040 942204 0 0 119 2047 300 740 8 3 82 7
\n 0 0 184 119536 7040 942204 0 0 0 0 290 711 4 0 96 0
\n 1 2 184 103292 7092 958828 0 0 16 4496 413 685 2 13 82 3
\n 0 1 184 67828 7124 993432 0 0 0 46884 612 1149 2 30 0 68
\n 0 1 184 54188 7136 1006756 0 0 0 13312 552 878 2 12 0 86
\n 0 1 184 22908 7196 1036576 0 0 0 62472 447 1007 7 50 0 43
\n 0 1 184 24644 7224 1034272 0 0 0 24428 459 739 1 27 0 72
\n 0 3 184 25760 7236 1034740 0 0 0 4392 499 732 2 10 0 88
\n 1 3 184 23652 7284 1036484 0 0 0 42900 536 977 3 39 0 58
\n 1 4 184 25140 7308 1034448 0 0 0 41144 470 861 3 19 0 78
\n 0 2 184 24636 7340 1034084 0 0 12 33816 466 797 4 26 0 70
\n 0 2 184 25256 7340 1034084 0 0 0 0 447 605 2 3 0 95
\n 0 2 184 22904 7424 1035360 0 0 4 73032 466 848 6 58 0 36
\n 0 2 184 23272 7452 1036132 0 0 0 23308 458 786 3 27 0 70
\n 0 2 184 24144 7500 1035644 0 0 0 46364 478 800 7 35 0 58
\n 0 2 184 25132 7560 1034492 0 0 0 23356 441 673 2 16 0 82
\n 0 2 184 25752 7560 1034492 0 0 0 0 502 728 1 0 0 99
\n 0 1 184 23768 7632 1034748 0 0 0 74820 407 778 6 57 0 37
\n 0 2 184 23644 7672 1035388 0 0 0 41016 465 829 5 30 0 65
\n 0 2 184 23272 7712 1036284 0 0 0 39216 448 744 3 31 0 66
\n 0 1 184 23148 7752 1035900 0 0 0 37084 535 1120 3 29 0 68
\n 0 1 184 23024 7800 1035420 0 0 0 46112 435 724 3 34 0 63
\n 0 1 184 23024 6900 1035472 0 0 0 34832 480 737 5 24 0 71
\n 1 1 184 23024 6660 1036344 0 0 0 28956 450 759 2 30 0 68
\n 1 1 184 24016 6592 1035540 0 0 0 37108 483 873 2 27 0 71
\n 0 1 184 23396 6636 1036104 0 180 0 46644 420 874 6 34 0 60
\n 1 0 196 23148 6668 1036156 0 0 0 37896 473 812 5 29 0 66
\n 0 1 196 23272 6712 1035412 0 0 0 45064 409 709 2 34 0 64
\n 1 1 196 23148 6720 1037232 0 0 0 356 471 637 2 7 0 91
\n 0 2 196 23648 6744 1036236 0 0 0 48400 433 893 3 34 0 63
\n 0 1 196 23396 6276 1036672 0 0 0 46100 462 1001 4 33 0 63
\n 0 0 196 24016 6280 1036672 0 0 0 4 445 586 1 2 75 22
\n 0 0 196 24388 6280 1036672 0 0 0 0 358 475 1 3 96 0
\n 0 0 196 24388 6280 1036672 0 0 0 0 272 362 1 0 99 0
\n(TERMINAL 2) user@box:~% dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/path\/to\/parition\/on\/IDE\/disk\/file bs=1024 count=1000000
\n1000000+0 records in
\n1000000+0 records out
\n1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 28.1283 s, 36.4 MB\/s
\n<\/code>
\nHello degraded performace! 44.7Mb\/s -> 36.4MB\/s. This is a 18.57% drop. Still I consider it quite acceptable for a desktop pc.<\/p>\n
\n(TERMINAL 1) user@box:~% vmstat 1
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
\n 2 0 196 1031508 5284 43612 0 0 94 2389 310 715 8 3 77 12
\n 0 0 196 1031508 5284 43612 0 0 0 0 312 662 5 0 95 0
\n 1 0 196 966284 5284 107512 0 0 0 63484 343 457 6 48 15 31
\n 0 1 196 959588 5284 114240 0 0 0 7168 403 694 4 6 0 90
\n 0 1 196 952272 5284 121408 0 0 0 7168 371 610 4 8 0 88
\n 0 1 196 944956 5284 128572 0 0 0 7164 420 478 2 6 0 92
\n 1 1 196 918544 5324 151464 0 0 376 22652 429 1713 18 27 0 55
\n 0 2 196 917924 5324 152488 0 0 0 1048 416 649 2 3 0 95
\n 0 2 196 918048 5324 152488 0 0 0 16 392 540 0 0 0 100
\n 0 2 196 917552 5336 152648 0 0 172 20 435 780 2 0 0 98
\n 0 2 196 917676 5336 152648 0 0 0 0 372 491 0 0 0 100
\n 0 2 196 917800 5344 152648 0 0 0 60 404 559 3 0 0 97
\n 0 2 196 917924 5344 152648 0 0 0 20 380 620 2 1 0 97
\n 0 2 196 918172 5344 152648 0 0 0 28 416 966 6 1 0 93
\n 0 2 196 918296 5344 152648 0 0 0 16 369 356 2 0 0 98
\n 0 2 196 918420 5344 152648 0 0 0 16 401 384 0 1 0 99
\n 0 1 196 850840 5360 219204 0 0 0 66884 467 696 3 51 0 46
\n 0 1 196 845384 5368 224324 0 0 0 5136 419 520 3 1 0 96
\n 0 1 196 836952 5368 232512 0 0 0 8188 385 742 4 5 0 91
\n 0 1 196 831744 5368 237632 0 0 0 5120 426 489 0 1 0 99
\n 0 1 196 825420 5368 243776 0 0 0 6144 422 600 0 1 0 99
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
\n 1 2 196 819064 5368 245824 0 0 0 2096 417 1427 29 6 0 65
\n 0 2 196 823560 5368 245824 0 0 0 20 494 1913 16 4 0 80
\n 0 2 196 823808 5376 245824 0 0 0 28 480 1719 8 2 0 90
\n 0 1 196 758336 5384 310328 0 0 0 64800 423 1204 24 53 0 23
\n[snip]
\n 0 2 196 104236 5628 954752 0 0 0 8 405 745 2 2 0 96
\n 0 2 196 43600 5640 1013984 0 0 0 59740 453 815 4 44 0 52
\n 0 2 196 29712 5640 1027300 0 0 0 13320 403 758 3 5 0 92
\n 0 2 196 23892 5640 1032852 0 0 0 9220 430 693 4 4 0 92
\n 0 1 196 22776 3892 1035820 0 0 0 7184 402 728 5 1 0 94
\n 0 1 196 22776 3892 1035820 0 0 0 0 451 1172 5 3 0 92
\n 0 1 196 22776 3892 1035820 0 0 0 0 386 813 2 1 0 97
\n 0 1 196 22776 3896 1035820 0 0 0 4 412 385 0 0 0 100
\n 0 1 196 22776 3896 1035820 0 0 0 4 358 320 0 0 0 100
\n 0 1 196 25380 3896 1032748 0 0 0 0 416 722 7 1 0 92
\n 0 1 196 25504 3904 1032748 0 0 0 16 365 404 2 2 0 96
\n 0 1 196 25628 3904 1032748 0 0 0 0 396 471 1 1 0 98
\n 0 1 196 25876 3904 1032748 0 0 0 0 364 526 6 0 0 94
\n 0 0 196 26992 3912 1032748 0 0 0 968 395 1288 14 3 55 28
\nprocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
\n r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
\n 0 1 196 26992 3912 1032748 0 0 0 4 323 1412 13 1 86 0
\n 0 0 196 26992 3920 1032748 0 0 0 12 379 1755 16 1 83 0
\n(TERMINAL 2) user@box:~%dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/path\/to\/parition\/on\/SATA\/disk\/file bs=1024 count=1000000
\n1000000+0 records in
\n1000000+0 records out
\n1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 114.792 s, 8.9 MB\/s
\n<\/code>
\nWhat about that!!! 46Mb\/s -> 8.9Mb\/s<\/strong> That’s an incredible 80% percent performance loss! I\/O wait is always maxed at 90-100% which makes the machine totally unresponsive. I had to snip the output of vmstat because it is huge. It’s more than 140lines while all the others were at max 36 (athcool on, IDE). If anyone wants it I can surely upload it here.<\/p>\n
\nsys-power\/athcool causes massive filesystem corruption; upstream was informed but did not respond<\/a>. As far as I can tell Gentoo developers think that since there is a warning there is no extra reason that this package should be masked or whatever.<\/p>\n
\nIs there anyone else who can confirm the same behavior of athcool with sata controllers ? I don’t have another sata controller to test, but if someone uses a different sata module, a test like the one I performed would show us whether it’s a sata_sil problem, so that I should report it to the kernel maintainers or an athcool problem, so that we should at least fill a new bug at the Gentoo bugzilla<\/a> to ask the developers to hardmask the package.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"