ciss0: <HP Smart Array P410i> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xfac00000-0xfadfffff,0xfabf0000-0xfabf0fff irq 28 at device 0.0 on pci1 ciss0: PERFORMANT Transport da0 at ciss0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0 da0: <HP RAID 1(1+0) OK> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device da0: Serial Number 5001438013638F40 da0: 135.168MB/s transfers da0: Command Queueing enabled da0: 953837MB (1953459632 512 byte sectors) File operations are indeed very slow. Not sure if this is a widespread issue or particular to this old hardware. This server is not important to me, but I'm available to help fix this issue.
Scratch that. Now it's behaving normally. Perhaps the controller was running a scan earlier. Nothing in the sys logs, but the server had not been booted in quite a while.
^Triage: Reporter is committer, and resolver, assign accordingly
Set up another identical server today and discovered this: root@proliant2:/home/bacon # cciss_vol_status /dev/ciss0 /dev/ciss0: (Smart Array P410i) RAID 1(1+0) Volume 0 status: OK. /dev/ciss0(Smart Array P410i:0): Non-Volatile Cache status: Cache configured: Yes Total cache memory: 144 MiB Cache Ratio: 25% Read / 75% Write Read cache memory: 36 MiB Write cache memory: 108 MiB Write cache enabled: No Write cache temporarily disabled Temporary disable condition. Posted write operations have been disabled due to the fact that less than 75% of the battery packs are at the sufficient voltage level. So the poor performance on the first server was probably due to the write cache being disabled until the batteries recharged. This explains why the problem resolved itself.