More Netbook

AAO tweak #2

Optimising the SSD I/O

Normaly the I/O algorithm for writing/reading to/from the disk is optimised to read blocks from the disk in an sequential order.

This is so that the heads in the disk doesnt have to jump, for example from block 3 to 189 to34 to 947 to 4,,and so on... , instead the head will read/write the sequence 3 to 4 to 34 to 189 to 947,,,, speeding up access times and so on.

Which is all good and well if you only have one harddrive.

However, since the AAO is using an SSD, there are no heads that needs to be moved around, the SSD will read anything, in any order you want, so what we can do is to disable that sequencial algorithm and free some CPU cycles for more important stuff, like blagging. =)

It is quite important to get thing right here, since if something goes wrong the netbook might become unusable, if you have any doubts about what youre doing,  just dont do it. (that should be enough for the obligatory disclaimer)

- First open up the RUN window with ALT+F2

- write "xterm" and press RUN, to open up the terminal

- and write "sudo mousepad /boot/grub/grub.conf"

  this will open something that looks suspiciously just like notepad in XP

- Find the line that says "kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x31 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_timer"

- to the end of that line, add " elevator=noop"  

   (there should be a space between "nolapic_timer" and "elevator=noop")

- make sure your edited line looks just like this "kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x31 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_timer elevator=noop"

- save the file and close all the windows , or close and select save,, which ever works for you.

Once the netbook has rebooted, it should no longer be optimizing the read/writes for the heads of the harddrive that doesnt exist in an SSD. =)