RE: install sloooow doooown

Not at all, there is probably something wrong hardware wise on your system.
I have numerous
multidrive IDE Linux servers here and not one of them ever behaved as you
described.
typically your problem is caused by a bad hard drive (head crash - drive
makes really weird groaning
noises usually went it hits the bad spots because the heads keep retrying to
read the bad sectors
repeatedly before giving up) or wrong Drive geometry parameters
in the bios disk table or on the drive itself.

Did you originally format and bad block check the drives? did you use disk
druid to
layout the partitions, select format and bad block check all the partitions?

The installer only installs files to ONE filesystem at a time, therefore
neither drive has an issue during an installation. Having two drives on a
controller only impacts
performance slightly while running after installation and only really if you
are running as a server. Your apparently
largest disk is only 12 GB. I am running TRI-40GB drive EIDE servers using
Raid1 disk mirrors between two
of them. This keeps both IDE chains going simultaneously. Redhat 7.1 and 8.0
have both formatted, bad block
checked and installed in record time.

It is also possible that your "bad drive" is running EZ-BIOS and has a
non-standard drive layout map.
Your size drive is very near the size when the disk manufacturers begin
doing drive maps to get around
PC Bios limits on cylinders, tracks and sectors. Your disk may be EZ-Bios'd
to CTS mode and not LBA mode.
especially possible if a Maxtor brand drive. I had numerous problems with
two identical maxtor drives
and a RAID configuration until I checked them with the EZ-BIOS dos utility
from maxtor and discovered
the underlying drive mappings were totally different. Never could get the
map to change, dropped the
out of spec drive off the machine and replaced it. If it is a maxtor drive,
then go to Maxtor
website and download their utility set. It can do extreme surface scans of
the disk as well as display and modify
any EZ-BIOS mappings.

It is also possible your cable is bad or improperly seated, but most likely
cause is a marginal disk

++> -----Original Message-----
++> From: [email protected]
++> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of John
++> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 5:37 PM
++> To: [email protected]
++> Subject: RE: install sloooow doooown
++>
++>
++> Learning the hard way is my weapon of choice.  Its gonna
++> cost a lot of
++> beer around here  I can tell.
++>
++> Is it really common knowledge that having two hard drives
++> on the same
++> IDE results in such a performance hit?  This is pretty severe slow
++> down....... trying to imagine what the installer was doing
++> that would
++> result in so much confusion on the IDE bus.  I have to assume that
++> 'normal' linux operation can accommodate a slave IDW hard drive.  It
++> must be the installer with command files on one partition/drive
++> directing packages off the cd onto the 2nd
++> partition/drive.... killed me
++>
++>
++> Anyway it doesn't matter I took the small drive out and the install
++> succeeded.  I am a newbie using O'Rielys 'Learning Red Hat' as my
++> 'blind' guide.
++>
++> But tell me.   Should I rip out those IDE slave hard drive from XP
++> before or after I leave the beer at the door step....   hehe   just
++> kiddn.   Thanks for helping me get my shell back.   Im happy
++>
++>
++> cheers
++>
++> John
++>
++>
++>
++>
++>
++> -----Original Message-----
++> From: [email protected]
++> [mailto:[email protected]]
++> On Behalf Of Stewart M. Ives
++> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 12:02 PM
++> To: [email protected]
++> Subject: RE: install sloooow doooown
++>
++> [email protected] wrote:
++> > They are IDE and they are on the same IDE channel.  I'll
++> separate them
++> > ASAP.  Although the current install should be complete,
++> at the current
++> > pace, in 6 or 7 hours.
++>
++> So John, Didn't do your homework.  You are fined 1 case of
++> beer.  Just
++> drop
++> it on the door step, I'll take it from there.
++>
++> stew
++>
++> >
++> > Thanks
++> >
++> > john
++> >
++> > -----Original Message-----
++> > From: [email protected]
++> > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stewart M. Ives
++> > Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 11:20 AM
++> > To: [email protected]
++> > Subject: RE: install sloooow doooown
++> >
++> > Oh, here I go again, topposting. I'm sorry up front.
++> >
++> > Anyway.  You didn't say what kind of drives these are.
++> If they are
++> > IDE do
++> > you have them on different IDE cables and thus different
++> IDE channels?
++> > If
++> > not then do that.  You should never install IDE drives on the same
++> > channel.
++> >
++> > If there SCSI then I don't know what's up.  Shouldn't be hardware.
++> >
++> > Are the CD's clean that you are installing from??
++> Sometimes that can
++> > slooow
++> > the install down.  Keeps trying to get a good read.
++> >
++> > stew
++> >
++> >
++> > -----Original Message-----
++> > From: [email protected]
++> > [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of John
++> > Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 1:33 PM
++> > To: [email protected]
++> > Subject: install sloooow doooown
++> >
++> >
++> >
++> > Has anyone experienced redhat 7.2 setup which starts the packages
++> > installation fairly zippy, gets about 2/3 the way, then starts
++> > crawling to about 5 MB an hour?   I suspect a disk problem because
++> > last night I attempted a rather elaborate partition scheme to
++> > accommodate Oracle's 'optimal framework'.   The install
++> started slow
++> > and remained slow : 200MB in four hours!
++> >
++> >
++> > This is an older Motherboard with pentiumII 500 MB
++> memory,  two hard
++> > drives
++> >
++> > This latest attempt, something as follows:
++> > Primary is 2 GB     50MB /boot    1000   /swap     950
++> MB /oradata
++> > Slave   is 12 GB    4096MB  /		4096 /usr
++>    3000MB
++> > /oracle
++> > achieved 800MB package installation very quickly then started
++> > crawling.
++> >
++> >
++> > I should also stated that I have a difficult time getting
++> redhat to
++> > recognize the larger drive, although the bios detects it
++> everytime.
++> > That's a strange discrepancy.   What I have to do after
++> each failed
++> > install is take the drive to a machine with partition
++> magic and wipe
++> > out the partitions with the 'complete clean' option.
++> >
++> > Can anyone confirm that this is a disk problem or help me
++> figure out
++> > what might cause this weird slowdown?
++> >
++> > Regards,
++> >
++> > John
++> > Lrb-creations
++> > 415 647-0457
++> >
++> >
++> >
++> > _______________________________________________
++> > enigma-list mailing list
++> > [email protected]
++> > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/enigma-list
++> >
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++> >
++> >
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