Re: Problems caused by scheduler tweaks in 2.6.0-test6?

[Nick Piggin <piggin@cyberone.com.au>]

Did you see this Con?

By the way Tom, I have my scheduler patch available for test6 here:
http://www.kerneltrap.org/~npiggin/v15a/sched-rollup-v15a-260t6.gz

Tom Sightler wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>Over the last few months I have tested many different scheduler tweaks
>mostly by testing the -mm kernels and also by applying Nick's patches
>against vanilla kernels.  Up until recently I have been very happy with
>2.6.0-test5 with Nick's scheduler patches.
>
>Then I decided to try 2.6.0-test6 which seems to include a lot of Con's
>work and, while overall this seems nice, I'm having two relatively
>serious side effects that seem to be related to this inclusion.
>
>1.  VMware performance varies wildly.  I can't put my finger on this
>exact issue, but I have found as way to repeatably trigger bad
>performance.  When running VMware in fullscreen mode, enable window
>animation and repeatedly minimize/maximize a window.  Under 2.4.x and
>2.6.0-test5 w/Nick's patches this process runs reasonably smooth,
>although noticably slower than native speed.  With stock 2.6.0-test6
>after only a few seconds the minimize/maximize animiation slows to a
>complete crawl, take 20+ seconds to complete the minimize opertaion. 
>I've tried tuning VMware with priorities but no luck.
>
>2.  I also use Wine to run various Windows programs on occasion,
>particularly Outlook 2000 (mainly when attempting to help other running
>this application on Windows).  The program runs fine, but always hangs
>on exit.  I didn't originally think this was related to the scheduler,
>but interestingly, after applying Nick's patches to 2.6.0-test6, which
>back out Con's changes, this problem goes away.
>
>Is there any help out there for these type of issues?  I know that many
>people seem to think these changes make life better, and I'll admidt
>that playing MP3's and DVD's is better with these changes, but I'd
>rather have my system preform well at other tasks.  I would think having
>a way to turn off all the fancy interactivity detection would be ideal
>but there always seems to be opposition to adding tuning knobs.
>
>Later,
>Tom
>
>  
>