Arch Linux

faken

Member

From: Delmenhorst, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-01

Posts: 6

Workstation Performance Guide

Hi,
i want to push out the maximum of my dell e521(athlon x2 4200+ 1GB DDR2 Ram, 500GB Samsung sata hdd 7600gt).

Atm i am using Archlinux 32bit vodoo with the testing/community ports enabled.
I recompiled a custom Kernel 2.6.22-rc5 width the following CFLAGS:" Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O3 -mno-sse3 -ffast-math -fomit-frame-pointer" and build everything inside the kernel image which i have to use for my machine.

And I disabled all deamons, which i dont nead.

Current Software I use: XFCE4+composite,Swiftfox,Virtualbox,Evolution,xmms,gaim,gdesklets

Iam thinking about installing Arch64. will  there be any performance boot on my machine ?

What also can i do, to squeeze the maximum out of my computer ?

Sorry for my bad English

Lord_Bad

Member

Registered: 2005-04-17

Posts: 54

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

You'll get only marginal benefits if any from using arch64. I can give you one hint to boost your HDD performance - take a look at hdparm.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

You really shouldn't compile a kernel with that sort of optimization. You're only asking for trouble.

dr_te_z

Member

From: Zoetermeer, the Netherlands

Registered: 2006-12-06

Posts: 154

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

You're only asking for trouble.

You're accepting the challange, that's why you choose linux.
Keep up the good work, keep us informed about the progress you've accomplished and there is nothing wrong with your english.

Last edited by dr_te_z (2007-06-22 05:23:16)

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Somewhere between "too small" and "too large" lies the size that is just right.
- Scott Hayes

shining

Pacman Developer

Registered: 2006-05-10

Posts: 2,043

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

You're accepting the challange, that's why you choose linux.
Keep up the good work, keep us informed about the progress you've accomplished and there is nothing wrong with your english.

Which challenge ?

Anyway, I would really like to see a benchmark with these CFLAGS and without,
and with everything built in, and nearly everything as modules, like in arch stock kernel.

Since it's the kernel, it's indeed interesting to optimize it, but I'm curious if these two modifications cause any benefit.

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pacman roulette : pacman -S $(pacman -Slq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n $((RANDOM % 10)))

faken

Member

From: Delmenhorst, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-01

Posts: 6

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

please specify which benchmark i should use, and i would run some tests.

Btw. Now iam using Arch64
Virtualbox64 seams to be faster, but i could be a placebo effect.

ravisghosh

Member

From: Intergalactic Spaces

Registered: 2006-10-12

Posts: 517

Website

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

use light weight desktop environment/window manager.

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Ravi S Ghosh
www.ravisghosh.com
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faken

Member

From: Delmenhorst, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-01

Posts: 6

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

Iam using XFCE4, i thing this is lightweight enought, compared to KDE or Gnome ..

ravisghosh

Member

From: Intergalactic Spaces

Registered: 2006-10-12

Posts: 517

Website

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

u r right, but using some window manager like pekwm will reduce it further although configuration is text based but simple.

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Ravi S Ghosh
www.ravisghosh.com
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cb951303

Member

Registered: 2007-03-17

Posts: 92

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

xfce runs slower than gnome in my system

karsten

Member

Registered: 2006-07-14

Posts: 261

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

did you disable all the kernel modules you didn't need?

faken

Member

From: Delmenhorst, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-01

Posts: 6

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

Aje, I disabled nearly everything, that i didn't need.
My system boottime is nearly perfect (bootchart) says 12 seconds, but the overall system performance is sometimes a bit slow.

broch

Banned

From: L.A. California

Registered: 2006-11-13

Posts: 975

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

hdparm.? on sata?

there is few general rules (I think)
1) optimize hardware (on slow hardware nothing will run fast)
2) optimize mkfs flags for your file system of choice (best for our applications: e.g don't use ext3 for professional video editing as ext3 tends to loose frames). Later adjust fstab settings
3) run services needed
4) re-compile kernel, however even best flags will not help that much: you will have to recompile whole system. This seems extreme as Arch is optimized already. re-compilation will optimize (eventually) memory use, devices and such
5) optimize disk I/O
this however may slow down a little boot time as disk I/O optimization is not really designed in boot time in the mind
6) if you have a lot of RAM try to set up RAMDISK

results will vary depending on your hardware and skills

judfilm

Member

Registered: 2004-02-12

Posts: 229

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

Are there any specific tips to try to boost arch performance?

dr_te_z

Member

From: Zoetermeer, the Netherlands

Registered: 2006-12-06

Posts: 154

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

Which challenge ?

Well, I found this http://rtg.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/do … a-pada.pdf and all that sounds challenging to me.
Personally, I run Arch on my lease-laptop (R50p thinkpad)  so I cannot take too much risks by messing around with the bios because the boss want to keep the original XP image.
But I must say: the part were you're booting time goes down the drain with an unreachable network is interesting for laptop users.

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Somewhere between "too small" and "too large" lies the size that is just right.
- Scott Hayes

anykey

Member

From: Trier, Germany

Registered: 2004-06-12

Posts: 79

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

In my personal experience, boot times say nothing. The system has to run fast, not boot fast. On laptops, one has suspend to ram (and I admit that I reboot only if the kernel gets changed, so I dont mind boottime, really), on desktops, it does not matter that much anyway, if it stays below 30 to 45 seconds.

As for "challenge, that's why you choose linux" -- I chose linux for stability and because I mainly do C, and because I like it in linux. No need to get all rambo-like and see the need for challenges just because "it is linux"... my 2 cents

[clarification added: you know, getting work done takes the main interest, not pimping a system, which after all is a reason to stay with linux.]

Last edited by anykey (2007-06-25 09:11:18)

Lord_Bad

Member

Registered: 2005-04-17

Posts: 54

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

broch, you are right of course. I overlooked the HDD's interface. Instead of hdparm sdparm should be used.

ravisghosh

Member

From: Intergalactic Spaces

Registered: 2006-10-12

Posts: 517

Website

Re: Workstation Performance Guide

here is something from arch wiki

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Speedup_boot

My /etc/mkinitcpio has the following hooks.

HOOKS="base udev autodetect ide scsi sata filesystems"

I do not have scsi or sata. So, just removing those 2 from mkinitcpio.conf will be enough or do we need to do something else. wiki entry of mkinitcpio talks about creating the image which I did not understand whether we need to do after we change the values in the conf file.

Also wiki entry of mkinitcpio says, that if we put all the modules needed in the modules section, then udev can be removed from hooks and i guess that will give a bood in boot time as well as performance. How to determine which modules does udev loads so that one can add those in modules and remove udev.

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Ravi S Ghosh
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