My Performance Tweaks To Ubuntu

Filed Under Linux at 31st October 2009 0:01 by Danny

Tags: computer, DMA, HDD, hdparm, Linux, Optimizing, Performance, prefetching, shell, Startup, Ubuntu

Now that I have a “spare” Linux box I thought I’d try and improve the speed on the box. If it goes kaput I learn and re-install. So here are the ones I found that worked:

hdparm

This is the best speed boaster overall. It enables DMA mode which almost all computers nowadays support. It’s usually installed but incase you haven’t or if you want to check use this command:
$ sudo apt-get install hdparm

Once installed find out where your root HDD is located in /etc/fstab using a text editor and look for a “/” under the column “” The information you need to take away is the “” column on the same line as the “/”. Usually it is the first HDD which is /dev/sda1. Drop the number at the end because it’s the partition number and type the following:
$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda where /dev/sda is the HDD in the fstab file.

This trick once set is not permanent. You must

preload

This is like prefetching where it monitors your daily habits and remembers the files you open. Over time it will know which files are used the most and load them into memory ready before Linux/Ubuntu requests the file. Install preload:
$ sudo apt-get install preload

Ensure the daemon has started:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/preload start

Allow Concurrency Startup

By default when the computer boots all services are started up one after another. Nowadays with multicore processors and better programming techniques (I hope) allows the services to start up in parallel.

Edit the file /etc/init.d/rc Find

CONCURRENCY=none

and change it to CONCURRENCY=shell
Save and exit.

Optimizing your Ubuntu hard drive with hdparm

About Danny

Young I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way to do this is blogging. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny is now in the industry that he has aimed since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Linux and tagged computer, DMA, HDD, hdparm, Linux, Optimizing, Performance, prefetching, shell, Startup, Ubuntu. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to My Performance Tweaks To Ubuntu

higuita says:
5 September 2011 at 3:42
hdparm -tT /dev/sda will only test the buffered and unbuffered read speed, it will NOT enable the DMA
you want the -d1 option
check the current status with hdparm -I /dev/sda (that is a capital i) … all values with are enable, check in the DMA which one is enabled.
Reply

Danny Tsang