Optimizing Gentoo (Seeking Help)

coplaniuk · Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject:

Status Update...

In the process of all this, I ended up upgrading my gcc as well. So I am recompiling the entire system. I'm expecting it to take another couple of days, so there aren't many tweaks I can do at this point. Things already seem to be moving much faster. But I expect it to work much better once everything is recompiled with the correct march options and the freshly modified USE flags.

I'll keep you posted. I learned a LOT this thread.
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wrc1944 · Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:40 am Post subject:

Yes- gcc-4.1.1 definitely has made some overall improvements in compiling speed., which for us Gentoo users is great. I really see no reason to use any gcc-3.x.x version.

Don't forget about tweaking ext3, if you have any ext3 partitions, as it makes a significant performance improvement. In fact, I converted all my systems back to tuned ext3 partitions from reiserfs some time ago (once I discovered ext3 needed to be tuned), except my reiserfs /usr/portage partition, which consists mainly of very small files, at which reiserfs excels. Check out codergeek42's great "Some ext3 Filesystem Tips" thread for details, or post back if you need more comments from a long-time reiserfs devotee who's done this. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-305871-highlight-ext3+tweaking.html

Having a sophisticated and targeted partition scheme, where each partition is formatted with the best file system for its specific usage is a good performance tip, and well worth setting up right. For example, you might place all your huge multimedia files on an XFS partition, since it excels at handling huge files.

It's also a good idea to put your distfiles directory on a partition other than /.
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Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

coplaniuk · Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:12 am Post subject:

distfiles...you mean the portage tree?
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~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

To summarize, distfiles means the files in $DISTDIR which amount to a local cache of downloaded packages.

In slightly more detail, 'distfiles' refers to the contents of the directory named in DISTDIR (in make.conf), which defaults to /usr/portage/distfiles, DISTDIR is described in man 5 portage as follows.

coplaniuk · Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject:

Segway back to the Kernel discussion for a short time.

I wasn't 100% certain what modules I'd need for future use. So I compiled modules for a lot of features I'm not 100% sure I'll use (printing support, external device support, etc). Now...these are modules, so I assume they won't affect the filesize or the efficiency of the kernel, correct?

And what about drivers I know I'll use? IDE drivers and the like. Would it be more efficient to compile directly into the kernel or as a module? Or doesn't it matter?
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~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

wrc1944 · Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:14 pm Post subject:

Correct. That's the main reason for modules- to create leaner kernels. If you have Loadable module support selected in the kernel config, they should load when needed. In some cases, you might have to list certain ones in the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file. There's an ongoing debate on whether monolithic (everything compiled in) or modular kernels are better.

I think most essential drivers, or the ones you know you'll use do better compiled into the kernel. Alsa/sound seems to do better as modules on my systems.
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Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

coplaniuk · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:36 pm Post subject: Shiny and new

Okay, that whole process took a bit longer than I had hoped. But it seems to be a pretty good end result, thus far. Mouse is no longer skipping across the screen constantly.

Sound is acting a bit strange. When I start the system, I can play sounds (without error) but no output is coming out. But after the machine has been on a little while, it does start playing. So I gotta figure that out. When it is playing, it still skips from time to time when I switch between applications. But with this recent trouble, I suspect it might be a sound configuration problem. I should note that the skipping is most noticable with web applications like flash. pandora.com, for example.

Hard drive tweaking...I read through that link with the e2fsck and the tune2fs tools. A lot of those were set by default. Now I'm looking into messing with the hdparm stuff. I'm sure that will help a bit as well.

Kernel - I modularized nearly everything I could with exception of my framebuffer device and my filesystem support. That does seem to be making a difference. AT least I have a lot more available memory.

So it really comes down to hdparm and trying to figure out the funk with my sound drivers. I'll continue to post my status. I appreciate all your help thus far. The system is running 10x smoother now.
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~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

coplaniuk · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:45 pm Post subject:

wrc1944 · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:38 pm Post subject:

More thoughts, Re your last post.

1. Is the sound the same or better as before all this? I assume you're using the motherboard's onboard sound? I would investigate the sound bios settings- maybe it needs it's own IRQ, or something like that. Check your motherboard manual for detailed info.

2. Did you set your ext3 partitions to use dir_index- that's the most important one. I would also try setting them to data=writeback instead of data=journal, as then the journal will then function like reiserfs (metadata only). This is the "performance" setting for ext3, according to the kernel Docs. I've also read recently that the info about jounal=data "super high performance" is now dated, and not necessarily correct with modern kernels. I'm going to change all my ext3 partitions back to writeback today.

I'd also consider changing your journal commit=n interval number from the default of every 5 seconds. For example, mine are set to 600secs and 60secs, so then there's less chance of the full journalling commit taking cpu cycles from anything else, like sound. That's also a good argument for data=writeback. I am taking an infinitesimal theoretical chance of loosing up to the last 60 or 600secs of changed data, and remember that writeback and longer commit intervals mean less intense ext3 journalling activity, but no less than reiserfs does by default. I've never lost any data on a crash, whatever mode or whatever file system I was using at the time. For me, it's a non-issue, and I'd rather have the increased performance- but that might not be your case. I guess you should decide how much current data you're willing to risk (time passed since the last journal commit). Having my cpu/system do a full journal every 5 seconds just seemed ridiculous to me, as I can't even type three new words in 5 seconds. :wink:

What's your current tune2fs -l /dev/hdXY (or dev/sdXY) output on your partitions, and your current partitioning scheme? (that's a lower case L, and you can use that command on mounted partitions).

3. Are you using a -ck kernel? This will probably help. What cpu scheduler are you using? From what you say, I think your problem seems to be that an instigated action on your part (like opening a new app, etc.) briefly takes cpu cycles away from your sound applications. I think the cpu and IO schedulers need more investigation.

Just to check, please give us the output of dmesg and lsmod.

To reduce forum clutter, maybe post your entire kernel config file on http://pastebin.com/

Here's mine (Just tried it for the first time- after hitting "send," it took about a minute to generate the url of my kernel config file, so don't think it's not working. Then I just copied the url in the address bar to this forum post)
http://pastebin.com/796330

4. On the i2c thing, I find my i2c stuff works better as modules, and I have to list them in the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file.
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Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

wrc1944 · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:18 am Post subject:

I like ksensors- works great.
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Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

coplaniuk · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:39 am Post subject:

Having fun with pastebin...and my lists are so long. Here gos...

My kernel .config file:
http://pastebin.com/796579

dmesg:
http://pastebin.com/796572

As for the other things...

tune2fs -l:

wrc1944 · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:44 am Post subject:

I think you need to compile a new 2.6.18-ck1 kernel, manually, keeping your old one, and try changing CONFIG_HZ=100 to CONFIG_HZ=1000. IIRC, 100HZ is for servers.

Use could you current kernel config to load into make xconfig, and maybe tweak it a little later.

I haven't had time to really look at your files- just scanned them briefly- will try and do more later.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

coplaniuk · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject:

Changed to 1000hz. Performance is slightly better now.

Now that I'm getting into these minute little tweaks...performance isn't quite as noticable to me. At least it's harder for me to figure out if the machine is working better. Is there a multi-media and performance benchmark utility that you would recommend so that I can quickly figure out if a configuration has improved or hindered my performance.

data=writeback
I added that to my partition option in my fstab, and then when I rebooted, it couldn't mount the partition. I had to revert back to data=journal to get it to work. Is there an option in the kernel config that I need to tweak or a module I need to load to get this? Is this maybe a kernel command and not a mount option?
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-- Coplan
~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

wrc1944 · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 5:23 am Post subject:

Is the audio skipping better or solved? If you haven't done so, you really should try a 2.6.18-ck1 kernel- you won't regret it.

For a benchmark, there are several out there, but I haven't used them myself- Bonnie comes to mind. I ran Justin Piszcz's LinuxGazette script on my system. (he was kind enough to let me use it). I just googled for linux benchmarks, and got thiese Maybe I'll try some. http://lbs.sourceforge.net/

On the data writeback, the first page on the ext3 tips thread explains how. Both methods also apply to data=writeback

coplaniuk · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject:

Ok, thought I had things going very smoothly, but I'm still having problems. Things are definately better...but not performing the way it should.

Mouse still hangs and skips from time to time, usually when the machine is trying to load multiple web pages or compile something. Music is a little better, but still skips from time to time when I'm task switching. mpg321 (in a terminal window) plays a song flawlessly. But x11amp and streamed audio (via pandora.com) will skip when I taskswitch.

I had pretty much done everything we've discussed in this thread so far -- tweaks to the kernel, tweaks to the hard drive, upgraded to gcc 4, march options, etc -- except for two things. I hadn't yet tried to ck-sources and I havn't tried to set up the data=writeahead kernel/fstab option.

Last night, I downloaded and compiled a kernel with the ck-sources. As a test, I emerged (from file) xfce while I played around in KDE after booting from the ck-sources. x11amp still skipped. Mouse still lagged from time to time. I couldn't test pandora.com because I didn't yet compile my ipw3945 and ieee80211 modules to work with the new kernel. But I think those two things alone were enough to show me that there wasn't much of an improvement.

Once xfce4 compiled, I switched to that instead of KDE. x11amp didn't skip as much...but it still skipped when I taskswitched. Mouse acted pretty much the same. So XFCE was a bit of an improvement, but not much.

I know it's not RAM (I have 1gig RAM), Processor should be good enough (1.86ghz). Linux partition is only 40% full. My swap drive is barely used. I can't think of anything else that might help improve performance.

Any ideas?
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-- Coplan
~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

Try the anticipatory IO scheduler.

drescherjm · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:35 am Post subject:

wrc1944 · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:29 pm Post subject:

One thing-I notice under general setup in your kernel config you have:

CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE=y

make xconfig help says:

coplaniuk · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject:

coplaniuk · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject:

I recompiled to kernel removing the option for size optimization. Don't know how that got in there...but it's gone now.

wrc1944 · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:08 pm Post subject:

coplaniuk wrote:

coplaniuk · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 3:34 am Post subject:

FYI...My laptop:

HP Pavillion, dv5000t with the nvidia geforce GO 7400.

What other info could I paste to help troubleshoot?

Should I try a genkernel?
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-- Coplan
~/ Outland - Art, Music, PHP and Hidden Corners of the Web
-{ Embrace Life. Evolve your computer. Emerge Gentoo. }-

wrc1944 · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:06 am Post subject:

I would stay away from genkernel myself, but on the other hand, who knows?

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98&pgno=1
https://laptopmag.com/Review/HP-Pavilion-dv5000t.htm

I just read these pages- so I'd know what we're talking about. Sounds like this laptop has plenty of power/ram and should not be giving you these problems. It has to be a tuning/config issue (or two). I'll give it some more thought.

Did we look at your emerge --info?
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

coplaniuk · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:45 am Post subject:

Not a current one. I'll post that again:
emerge --info: