HP ProBook 640 G8 imaging extremely slowly

[diegotiranya]

Glad to help. Output files attached. Let me know if I can do anything else

vmdon.txt vmdoff.txt

[Jacob Gallant]

@sebastian-roth said in HP ProBook 640 G8 imaging extremely slowly:

@Dungody Thanks for the update and pictures! Definitely looks like you deploy to the NVMe driver. I still can’t see why a USB key plugged into the ProBook would make a difference. Though it sounds like it does.

In the picture I notice that you have partclone version 0.2.89. In FOG 1.5.9 we use the newer partclone 0.3.13. So I am wondering which version of FOG you use and if that is also playing a role here.

@Jacob-Gallant Would you want to give that a try as well?

I’d be happy to test this (and @diegotiranya storage controller settings) when I can, but we’ve been locked down due to COVID where I am so I can’t get back into the office in the near term. Looks like you have a few other testers now though! Glad I’m not the only one haha.

[george1421]

@diegotiranya Just to confirm that VMDON works at normal speed without needing to have a usb flash device installed?

VMDON

0000:00:1d.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:09ab]

10000:e0:1d.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a0b0] (rev 20)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport

VMDOFF

00:1d.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a0b0] (rev 20)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport

Looks like the base addressing also changes between vmd on and off.

[diegotiranya]

@george1421 That’s right. In my case, with VMD enabled, there is no need to plug in any usb storage device in order to get normal throughput.

[Sebastian Roth]

@diegotiranya said in HP ProBook 640 G8 imaging extremely slowly:

In my case, with VMD enabled, there is no need to plug in any usb storage device in order to get normal throughput.

But if VMD is disabled you can still get faster speeds if you plugin the USB key?

@Dungody Can you confirm enabling VMD in the UEFI settings will get you faster speeds without plugging in a USB key?

Seems like VMD support has been in the Linux kernel since quite some time now. Though I still wonder why we see it being so terribly slow when VMD is disabled.

[diegotiranya]

@sebastian-roth Yes, the USB key workaround works for me too with VMD disabled (but I had to use a usb3, with an old usb2 didnt’ work).

Anyway, I’ve been doing some write testing with dd and rsync from a debug task, getting same speeds in both VMD modes.

Sorry, I didn’t notice before that you suggested to upgrade because of partclone version. I’m using 0.2.89 too (FOG 1.4.4), so I’m going to get the latest and try again.

Thank you

[diegotiranya]

Upgraded to 1.5.9 and same behavior: fast with vmd on and slow with vmd off.

I don’t know if this helps but, after some testing, writing speed looks good and the slowlyness seems to occur only when copying from server, but testing network the bandwith looks good too.

One thing that pictures don’t show is that, with vmd off, rsync freezes for a while (even a few minutes) before starting or at the beginning of the copy but not with vmd on. I tried to copy with scp and it hangs too. Locally rsync, cp or dd from /dev/zero work well.

[Jacob Gallant]

I can report that both using the USB3 key method and enabling VMD worked for us as well. Great finds!

[Jonathan Cool]

@diegotiranya said in HP ProBook 640 G8 imaging extremely slowly:

Same problem here but solved (I think). Same model, same extremely slow cloning performance with 5.10.12-e1000e-3.8.7 kernel and same workaround with usb device connected (pendrive, but not other like mouse). Solution for me was enabling “Storage Controller for VMD” under “System Settings” menu.

I’m pending to test another laptops, only got one yet, but tried twice and looks to be working as spected (5-6 GB/s while enabled, 45MB/s while disabled).

Congrats and thank you very very very much for FOG.

Hi !
Just for information : i had the same problem on the same model (very very slow speed) and fixed by this tip !
Many MANY thank for that

[Jonathan Cool]

@jonathan-cool Fun fact … : if i check this option, the speed deploy is “normal” BUT the post deploy result of a beautiful BSOD … “INACESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE”.

If i go back to the BIOS and uncheck this feature, the SYSPREP works …
So … slow speed or BSOD ? The choice is hard … !