Re: [Xen-users] Xen 3.1 terrible slowly on a laptop

[Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@xxxxxxxxx>]

carlopmart wrote:
> Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> > carlopmart wrote:
> > > Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> > > > carlopmart wrote:
> > > > > Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> > > > > > carlopmart wrote:
> > > > > > > Hi all,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >  I have installed rhel 5.1 with xen 3.1 on a laptop and ALL is 
> > > > > > > terrible slowly (network, mouse, etc.) If I starts with a normal 
> > > > > > > kernel (without xen enabled) all works normally. Do I need to 
> > > > > > > pass any param to grub on xen enabled kernel to all works ok??
> > > > > > > Thanks ...
> > > > > > Laptops are always an adventure. Do you really have enough RAM? 
> > > > > > RHEL 5 is a bit of a RAM pig. Are you using all the CPU's, or 
> > > > > > only one? Is your hard drive an ATA drive that needs "hdparm" 
> > > > > > used to set it optimally? Tell us more!
> > > > > My laptop have 1 GB of RAM, and it is Pentium M 2.0Ghz. for guests 
> > > > > I only use one cpu. And another problem is clock: lost 5 minutes 
> > > > > every 15 min.... runs so slowly on host ...
> > > > Umm. Not good. Are you running NTP on the Dom0, and being sure not 
> > > > to run it on your DomU? And how much RAM did you allocatae for 
> > > > DomU? RHEL 5 is really, really unhappy with less than 250 Meg, and 
> > > > not exactly thrilled with as little as 500 Meg.
> > >
> > > Yes, I am running ntp on dom0 and not on domU. I am suing 384 MB ram 
> > > for guest, and rest for dom0.
> > OK. I wonder if you've got some other issues going on, such as the 
> > CPU being throttled back to do power saving. But what does "free" say 
> > in DomU about your available RAM? Are you swapping? And are you using 
> > a file image, or an LVM partition? And when you built the image, if 
> > you used a file image, did you make sure that it's not "sparse"?
> oops i think that you point me to the problem. I am using a sparse 
> file for guest disk ... Is this really a problem?? Can't i use sparse 
> files on a laptop???  And yes I have activated power saving ...
I've not played with it much, but using sparse files seems to be an 
awful idea until you've actually populated the file system through use. 
This means that your first system operations, such as installing 
software, compiling new tools, or building new databases, are goiing to 
suffer horribly from it.
I also can't help thinking that your Dom0 may not have its hard drive 
set up correctly: if you're using an IDE or ATA drive, check what 
"hdparm" says about it. You may get a huge performance benefit from a 
"hdparm -d1c1 /dev/hda" or from setting up your sysconfig setttings 
correctly for a contemporary ATA drive.
> My guest config is:
>
> kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-67.ELxenU"
> ramdisk = "/boot/initrd-2.6.9-67.ELxenU.img"
> bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
WHOAH. Hold it right there. Why are you using those kernel and ramdisk 
settings in company with the pygrub? You don't need them, and you 
probably added them manually, rather than using virt-install, right?
Comment them out and just use the pygrub.

> name = "RhelUpdates"
> memory = "384"
> maxmem = "384"
> disk = [ 
> 'tap:aio:/data/xenvmguests/rhel4updates/rhel4vol01.xvda,xvda,w' ]
> vif = [ 'type=ieomu, mac=00:16:31:a5:67:13, bridge=natxenbr0' ]
> vcpus = 1
> on_reboot = 'restart'
> on_crash = 'destroy'
> sdl = 0
> vnc = 1
> vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=1' ]

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