GUI slow/unresponsive during emerges on AMD64

[manojpm]

hi,

i have been experiencing unresponsiveness in gnome and all gui apps while an emerge is going on . my system config is as follows :

1) AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2) 1 gb RAM
3) ASUS A8N-VM - nvidia geforce 6100,nforce 410
4) 1 SATA 160 GB Seagate hdisk

CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe"

MAKEOPTS="-j2" ( but later commented out when i had this problem, but still no effect )

FEATURES="sandbox buildpkg ccache parallel-fetch metadata-transfer"

gnome sys monitor applet shows large load when an emerge is going on. by unresponsiveness, what i mean is , scrolling in firefox is not smooth,beryl animations tend to be choppy, the mouse pointer also seem to be slow . the whole gui seems slow.

i want to identify what n where the problem is. also, is it normal for the kernel load to be high when i am copying stuff ? the cpu usage is low but kernel load seems to be high.

[desultory]

Is the kernel in use on the system with this issue configured with preemption and timings skewed toward desktop use?
Post the output of egrep '(PREEMPT|SCHED|HZ)' .config when run in the root of the kernel source tree (typically /usr/src/linux/) used to build the kernel in use on the system in question to allow for evaluation of the preemption model and timing settings.

[santaclaws]

Have you tried out setting PORTAGE_NICENESS in your make.conf?

I am currently using a value of "15" and it makes the gui much more responsible.
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Software is like sex. It is better when ist is free.

[manojpm]

egrep '(PREEMPT|SCHED|HZ)' .config output is as follows :

CONFIG_IOSCHED_NOOP=y
# CONFIG_IOSCHED_AS is not set
# CONFIG_IOSCHED_DEADLINE is not set
CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
CONFIG_DEFAULT_IOSCHED="cfq"
# CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE is not set
CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY=y
# CONFIG_PREEMPT is not set
# CONFIG_HZ_100 is not set
# CONFIG_HZ_250 is not set
CONFIG_HZ_1000=y
CONFIG_HZ=1000
# CONFIG_NET_SCHED is not set
# CONFIG_USB_EHCI_TT_NEWSCHED is not set

[desultory]

Try setting CONFIG_IOSCHED_AS and CONFIG_PREEMPT to "y" and CONFIG_DEFAULT_IOSCHED to "anticipatory", in addition to the make.conf settings santaclaws recommended.

[manojpm]

hi,

the default scheduler is CFQ. does an anticipatory scheduler work better than a CFQ on amd64/SATA sys ? or are u asking me to check if using an anticipatory sched instead of CFQ solves the problem on my sys ? and how do i set CONFIG_PREEMPT from menuconfig ? and how does all this affect kernel's behavior?

[santaclaws]

I am using CFQ but I do not have a AMD64 machine - so I do not know

Schedulers: Block layer --> Default i/O scheduler --> voila

Preempt: Processor type and features --> Preemption Model --> Preemptible Kernel --> voila

But do not forget setting PORTAGE_NICENESS! It really affects the systems behavior a lot when emerging.
_________________
Software is like sex. It is better when ist is free.

[Belliash]

do you use beryl?
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Asio Software Technologies
Belliash IT Weblog

[jhagmar]

I've also found emerge to be quite of a processor hog, which is quite understandable. I suppose setting PORTAGE_NICENESS would most certainly help. I personally use

[manojpm]

yes i do beryl 0.1.4

[manojpm]

hi,
i shifted to anticipatory scheduler and prempted kernel and now emerges even at normal priority donot affect GUI especially firefox.

thanx a lot desultory.

[Belliash]