2.6.18-viper1: Mutatis Mutandis

vipernicus · 2.6.18-viper1: Mutatis Mutandis

Viper Sources is pretty much my playground for new patches.

The main goal of this patchset is pretty much the same as E-Mission Sources: to
offer latest features, decrease latencies, decrease overhead, and improve interactivity. The only difference is experimental versions of everything. I boot test each release and run for an extended amount of time.

/* Notes */
Alot of changes in this version, I dropped Lockless, RCU-Preempt, and Adaptive Readahead (for now) in favor
of playing around with the new Compressed Pagecache. http://linuxcompressed.sourceforge.net/

The LinuxCompressed Site wrote:

Compressed caching is the introduction of a new level into the virtual memory hierarchy. Specifically, RAM is used to store both an uncompressed cache of pages in their 'natural' encoding, and a compressed cache of pages in some compressed format. By using RAM to store some number of compressed pages, the effective size of RAM is increased, and so the number of page faults that must be serviced by very slow hard disks is decreased. Our aim is to improve system performance. When that is not possible, our goal is to introduce none (or a minimum overhead) when compressed caching is enabled in the system.

It's not enabled by default. Read: http://linuxcompressed.sourceforge.net/help/index.html

Example of new E-Mission Tunables (All but Custom are preconfigured options):

vipernicus · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 1:42 am Post subject:

Suspend2 removed from patch. If you d/led it before 20:41 CDT, try again.
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dbcoder · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2005 Posts: 47

I've been running for several hours rock solid. Nice and snappy too

. Good job!!!

Kirktis · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 14

For reasons I have not yet determined, building inevitably fails when I tell it I don't want the Rio Karma drivers... I'll post back when I discover more.

IvanMajhen · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 374 Location: Croatia

Why did you remove Suspend2? It is working here.
EDIT: Ok, I saw that there is still suspend2 as separate patch.

What are good values for Compressed Pagecache? The page dosn't say much. Will it be added to script? I added it to sysctl.conf

bigbob73 · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:31 am Post subject:

vipernicus · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 12:54 pm Post subject:

Alright, I fixed the patch again, hopefully this will do it.

GregKH's Rio Karma patch was incomplete.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

wrc1944 · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

Isn't this new Emission tunables script similar to (or a "linux" version of) the old win95/98 registry tweak where you can add the options as posted on the axcel216 website to the Control Panel -> (double)-click System applet -> Performance tab -> File System button -> Hard Disk tab -> "Typical role of this computer" box?

http://www.mdgx.com/newtip16.htm
scroll down about halfway, and look at:
MAX CACHE SPEED

And/or similar to the 3rd party "Cacheman" windows utility? http://www.outertech.com/?_charisma_page=product&id=2

I'm also curious about one thing:
If you have lots of ram, and never go into swap at all, just how relevant is the Compressed Pagecache going to be? I guess effectively "adding" ram is good, but if you never use swap anyway, wouldn't any overhead caused by Compressed Pagecache be counter-productive?

In other words, if one never uses swap, wouldn't dropping Lockless, RCU-Preempt, and Adaptive Readahead be less effective than adding Compressed Pagecache, which on some systems might be essentially useless?
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tranquilcool · Veteran Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 1030

nvidia-drivers wont build.

any help?
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dR0PS · ~x86 gentoo / zen-sources 2.6.36-zen1

same prob here, cannot help except detailed output; checked with nvidia-drivers-1.0.8762
cannot check for newer bins because of other reasons

wrc1944 · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 4:15 pm Post subject:

Just finished compiling, and rebooting- works like a charm!

I selected low-latency desktop in the Emission tunables make xconfig section.

Can anyone give us a brief explanation/rundown of the theory and rationale invovled for choosing the values assigned to each of the different usages?

vipernicus · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:19 pm Post subject:

tranquilcool · Veteran Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 1030

SENAME=KBUILD_STR(nv_i2c)" -D"KBUILD_MODNAME=KBUILD_STR(nvidia)" -c -o /var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/.tmp_nv-i2c.o /var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-i2c.c
/var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-i2c.c:26: error: unknown field âslave_sendâ specified in initializer
/var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-i2c.c:27: error: unknown field âslave_recvâ specified in initializer
make[3]: *** [/var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-i2c.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [_module_/var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv] Error 2
NVIDIA: left KBUILD.
nvidia.ko failed to build!
make[1]: *** [mdl] Error 1
make: *** [module] Error 2

these are nvidia-errors
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tranquilcool · Veteran Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 1030

this seems to solve the nvidia-drivers compile problem

remove lines 26 and 27 from

/var/tmp/portage/nvidia-drivers-1.0.8774/work/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8774-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-i2c.c
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wrc1944 · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:40 pm Post subject:

When I compiled, I looked at the values for each setting, and decided low-latency desktop would suit me best, but not knowing much about what the values really mean, maybe that's incorrect.

I recall back in my old win98 days, and even before the axcel216 registry tweak came out, most tweaking sites recommended setting windows to "network server" for best performance, even for desktop machines. Seemed to help some, as I recall, but I was REALLY ignorant in those days, as opposed to just "somewhat ignorant" now, so maybe it didn't really do much, if anything.

Maybe I'll try some of the other settings in the future. Am I correct in thinking you just run "emission-tunables whatever" as root, and the new settings are automatically adopted? Does the /usr/src/linux symlink necessarily need to be pointing to the running kernel for this to work? I'm assuming no reboot is needed- correct?
_________________
Main box- ASRock 880GM-LE AM3
Phenom II x6 1090T, 3.2 GHz, 8GB GSkill DDR3 1333mhz
Samsung SATA 500GB, Radeon HD 4670 1GB DDR3
Gentoo ~x86, ~amd64, glibc-2.15-r1, gcc-4.7.0, kernels 3.3.7, 3.4.0 w/auto-cgroups

tranquilcool · Veteran Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 1030

can't insert module bt878. so no /dev/video0
kernel simply hangs

any help?
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richard_ablitt · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 99

The Beta nvidia drivers seem to work (using the installer, I've not tried the ebuild).

ejs76 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 148

Kollin · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:17 pm Post subject:

getting the same here...
CC [M] drivers/usb/storage/usb.o
In file included from drivers/usb/storage/usb.c:179:
drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h:221: error: 'US_PR_KARMA' undeclared here (not in a function)
drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h:221: error: 'rio_karma_init' undeclared here (not in a function)
make[3]: *** [drivers/usb/storage/usb.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [drivers/usb/storage] Error 2
make[1]: *** [drivers/usb] Error 2
make: *** [drivers] Error 2

Same with the new patch

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vipernicus · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 10:20 pm Post subject:

Kollin · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 10:32 pm Post subject:

seren · Guru Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 448 Location: Wisconsin

Awsome patchset works like a charm. one question is how can i see if compressed caching is working? although the kernel is really snappy.

thanks

EAD · Guru Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 352

When will this great patch will make it way to the Emission patch?

Kirktis · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 14

Rebuilt, seems to be working fine. Will run some intense apps overnight to make sure nothing breaks on me

vipernicus · Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2006 10:36 am Post subject: