On a system I'm running Ubuntu 10.04. My raid-1 restore started out fast but quickly became ridiculously slow (at this rate the restore will take 150 days!):
dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid1 sdc1[2] sdb1[1]
1953513408 blocks [2/1] [_U]
[====>................] recovery = 24.4% (477497344/1953513408) finish=217368.0min speed=113K/sec
unused devices: <none>
Eventhough I have set the kernel variables to reasonably quick values:
dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min
1000000
dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max
100000000
I am using 2 2.0TB Western Digital Hard Disks, WDC WD20EARS-00M and WDC WD20EARS-00J. I believe they have been partitioned such that their sectors are aligned.
dimmer@paimon:/sys$ sudo parted /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 2.2
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2000GB 2000GB ext4
(parted) unit s
(parted) p
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 2048s 3907028991s 3907026944s ext4
(parted) q
dimmer@paimon:/sys$ sudo parted /dev/sdc
GNU Parted 2.2
Using /dev/sdc
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00J (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2000GB 2000GB ext4
I am beginning to think that I have a hardware problem, otherwise I can't imagine why the mdadm restore should be so slow.
I have done a benchmark on /dev/sdc using Ubuntu's disk utility GUI app, and the results looked normal so I know that sdc has the capability to write faster than this. I also had the same problem on a similar WD drive that I RMAd because of bad sectors. I suppose it's possible they sent me a replacement with bad sectors too, although there are no SMART values showing them yet.
Any ideas? Thanks.
As requested, output of top sorted by cpu usage (notice there is ~0 cpu usage). iowait is also zero which seems strange:
top - 11:35:13 up 2 days, 9:40, 3 users, load average: 2.87, 2.58, 2.30
Tasks: 142 total, 1 running, 141 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3096304k total, 1482164k used, 1614140k free, 617672k buffers
Swap: 1526132k total, 0k used, 1526132k free, 535416k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
45 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 2:17.02 scsi_eh_0
1 root 20 0 2808 1752 1204 S 0 0.1 0:00.46 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/0
4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.17 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/1
...
dmesg errors, definitely looking like hardware:
[202884.000157] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[202884.007015] ata5.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT
[202884.013728] ata5.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0
[202884.013730] res 40/00:00:ff:59:2e/00:00:35:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[202884.033667] ata5.00: status: { DRDY }
[202884.040329] ata5: hard resetting link
[202889.400050] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[202894.048087] ata5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[202894.054663] ata5: hard resetting link
[202899.412049] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[202904.060107] ata5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
[202904.066646] ata5: hard resetting link
[202905.840056] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[202905.849178] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[202905.849188] ata5: EH complete
[203899.000292] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[203899.007096] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
[203899.013841] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
[203899.013843] res 40/00:00:ff:f9:f6/00:00:38:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[203899.041232] ata5.00: status: { DRDY }
[203899.048133] ata5: hard resetting link
[203899.816134] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[203899.826062] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[203899.826079] ata5: EH complete
[204375.000200] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[204375.007421] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
[204375.014799] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
[204375.014800] res 40/00:00:ff:0c:0f/00:00:39:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[204375.044374] ata5.00: status: { DRDY }
[204375.051842] ata5: hard resetting link
[204380.408049] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[204384.440076] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[204384.449938] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[204384.449955] ata5: EH complete
[204395.988135] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[204395.988140] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
[204395.988147] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
[204395.988149] res 40/00:00:ff:0c:0f/00:00:39:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[204395.988151] ata5.00: status: { DRDY }
[204395.988156] ata5: hard resetting link
[204399.320075] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[204399.330487] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[204399.330503] ata5: EH complete