Kernel with better DMA engine support for Thecus N2100

The hard drive performance with the mainline kernel (which is used by Debian) is lower on IOP32x systems, such as the Thecus N2100, compared to the kernel used by the original firmware. This is because not all functionality of the DMA engine is used by the mainline kernel.

Intel has produced some patches that offload more work to the DMA engine (thereby leading to better performance) but they never got accepted into the mainline kernel. I've produced a 2.6.26 based kernel with these DMA engine patches from Intel. This kernel image should be considered experimental but I haven't seen any data corruption. Nevertheless, you should watch out for problems if you decide to install this kernel.

I intend to maintain a 2.6.26 kernel with these DMA patches throughout the lifetime of Debian 5.0 (lenny). When a new kernel update is made to lenny, I will update my repository accordingly. Please contact me if this repository is out of date.

Note: I'm not planning to provide a kernel with these DMA patches for Debian 6.0.

If you want to install this kernel, put the following line in /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://people.debian.org/~tbm/dma lenny main

Then run

apt-get update

When you upgrade your system (e.g. with apt-get upgrade), the kernel with the DMA patches will be installed. Please note that you'll receive a warning that the linux-image-2.6.26-2-iop32x package cannot be authenticated. This is because my repository is not signed. You can simply ignore this warning.

Again, please remember that these kernels are experimental, so watch out for your data. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.