Re: [ck] Re: Ten percent test

[Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>]

On Sunday 22 April 2007 20:48, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Am Montag 09 April 2007 schrieb Mike Galbraith:
> > On Mon, 2007-04-09 at 07:26 -0400, Ed Tomlinson wrote:
> > > On Monday 09 April 2007 01:38, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 09:08 -0400, Ed Tomlinson wrote:
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > >
> > > > > I am one of those who have been happily testing Con's patches.
> > > > >
> > > > > They work better than mainline here.
> > > >
> > > > (I tried a UP kernel yesterday, and even a single kernel build
> > > > would make noticeable hitches if I move a window around. YMMV etc.)
> > >
> > > Interesting.  I run UP amd64, 1000HZ, 1.25G, preempt off (on causes
> > > kernel stalls with no messages - but that is another story).  I do
> > > not notice a single make.   When several are running the desktop
> > > slows down a bit.  I do not have X niced.  Wonder why we see such
> > > different results?
> >
> > Probably because with your processor, in general cc1 can get the job
> > done faster, as can X.  The latency big hit happens when you hit the
> > end of the rotation.  You simply don't hit it as often as I do.  Anyone
> > with an old PIII box should hit the wall very quickly indeed.  I
> > haven't had time to try it here.
>
> Hi!
>
> I am running 2.6.20.7 + sd-0.44 on an IBM ThinkPad T23 that I use as my
> Amarok machine[1]. It  has a Pentium 3 with 1.13 GHz using ondemand
> frequency scaling and XFS as filesystem.
>
> So far music playback has been perfect even when I had it building kernel
> packages while wildly clicking around starting apps and then moving the
> Amarok window like mad while solid window moving is enabled. Amarok /
> xine continued to play the music totally unimpressed of that.
>
> So for me from a users point of view who wants good music playback *no
> matter what*, this is already perfect. Also the desktop feels quite
> snappy to me. It was only slow on anything I/O bound but thats
> understandable IMHO when make-kpkg tar -bzips the kernel source while 20
> KDE applications are starting and Amarok plays music.
>
> Should I try any specific tests? This also goes out to anybody else,
> especially to you, Con.  So if you want me to run some benchmarks, please
> tell me. I am not experienced in benchmarking, but if you tell me what to
> do, I can try it out. I prefer benchmarks that do not disrupt music
> playback, but can run more aggressive benchmarks over night. I think it
> might be good to use a benchmark that isn't I/O bound to really test the
> scheduler... but as said I am no expert on that and real life loads
> usually are I/O bound as well.
>
> Have to have an carefully eye on the harddisk though...
>
> Apr 22 11:51:06 deepdance smartd[3116]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Prefailure
> Attribute: 3 Spin_Up_Time changed from 154 to 150
>
> (well threshold is at 033, so still plenty to go, hope it will take some
> time till the next change)
>
> [1] http://martin-steigerwald.de/amarok-machine/ ;)

Thanks for the report. In your case, you've done the testing I require; that 
for your workloads everything works as you'd desire it without obvious 
problems. Just keeping an eye on newer versions if you have the time and 
inclination and making sure that everything stays as you expect it would be 
the most helpful thing you can do.

Thanks!

-- 
-ck