Kernel 2.4.16-r1 works perfectly for me, but -r2 makes my mp3 playing on SMB skip. It loads a huge chunk of the data at once (old method loaded about 280kbit/sec.. the size of the mp3). Then it pauses several seconds (loads about 3800kbit)... Then it gets another huge chunk. This causes major skipping in Noatun.
ok, great. thanks for the bug. I think it's related to the new readahead code doing its job too well. Will forward to Andrew Morton to verify.
I have something similar just playing mp3's (using xmms) on a local fs. When I just around from virtual desktop to virtual desktop the playing 'hiccups'/pauses for about 1/4 (or less) of a second.This is using -r2 as well. I haven't tried -r1 on this machine yet, but I'll do that tongiht.
It turns out that the readahead patch that was given to me by one of the developers as "good stuff" is still in development. I will be releasing a 2.4.17-r3 without this patch, since it is not really tuned right now and seems to create some performance problems.