Gentoo on the PS3...trimming the fat...

Chishs · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 55

So I've gotten pretty comfortable playing around with gentoo on the ps3 (making the stage4 a workable build environment, customizing some things, stuff like that). So now I was looking at memory usage (with X and gnome running) compared with the fresh install and now and I've only gotten it down to about 40~45%. This seems REALLY high to me as this is before I even run anything programs like epiphany or snes9x. So now I'm recompiling most everything with -Os instead of -O2 to see where that gets me (at the very least it will free up some hard disk space). I was wondering if there is anything else I could do to bring down file size and memory usage.

Things that have crossed my mind:
uclibc instead of glibc
busybox instead of coreutils

now mind you I have no experience using uclibc or busybox so I don't really know how to rebuild everything using them.

Sadako · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:28 am Post subject:

I don't actually have a PS3 (

), however IIRC it only has 512 mb's of ram, 40% of which is ~205 mb, which isn't that bad and is to be expected when using gnome I would think.

Try starting something much lighter upon logging in after a fresh boot (such as one of the *box's), and see how much of a difference that makes.

Also what and how many services/daemons are started upon boot?

I don't think using either busybox or uclibc will lead to a notable improvement in memory usage (at least not when used alongside gnome), and uclibc can be problematic on a desktop system (when I tried messing with it, it blocked glib from being pulled in, which in turn blocked gtk, which of course gnome requires).

Also, in my experience -Os doesn't make a huge difference either, not on a machine which 512 mb of ram in the first place.
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aronparsons · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:49 am Post subject:

I'm browsing this forum to see what state Gentoo is at for the PS3 (don't have one yet, seriously considering it though). What do your USE flags look like? Trimming down on features you don't need should reduce the size of your libraries, although I'm not familiar with GNOME and what all it pulls in as I'm a KDE guy. Maybe look at a lightweight window manager like XFCE instead of GNOME. Until you actually the system actually starts swapping memory during your activities, I wouldn't worry about memory utilization *too* much; I can't imagine things like an SNES emulator sucking up too much memory as even an Xbox has no problems with only 64MB (granted, that's without an underlying OS).

Chishs · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 55

I tried using openbox instead of gnome and it brought memory usage WAY down...I'm guessing around 25-30%...I'm guessing a my old tv (it doesn't get much older that tubes) doesn't have the resolution to read the tiny text on Conky. I'm gonna keep gnome around until I'm comfortable with it (it feels a lot like blackbox...may she rest in peace...).

Trying uclibc and busybox are on my list of things to do but I'm going to wait until I have a usb hard drive to back my current system up on. Even if they don't touch memory usage they'll definitely free up hard drive space.