Arch on Eee PC

puelocesar · 2008-07-08 20:41:04

puelocesar wrote:

Hi all, I recently installed Archlinux on my EEE folowing the instructions from the wiki, and I'm very satisfied with boot speed, but I'm having *serious* problems with 2D performance on X11.
I'm using the kernel-eee from toofishes, and intel driver. I tried setting AccelMethod to Xaa and putting "INTEL_BATCH=1" in /etc/environment, and indeed I got some better results, but still my desktop is much slower than the debian I had installed on this machine. I tried using the i810 driver too, but I had the same performance issues.
After googleing a bit, I found this: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=19944
And I experimented booting with Arch's stock kernel, and for my surprise, 2d was very fast again. The problem is that I don't want to use the default kernel, because it loads thousands of modules and udev is slow at boot, and I'll have to compile the dkite's modules, as he does not provide precompiled modules for 2.6.25..
So, I'm asking for help so I can restore 2d performance on toofishes kernel..
obs: If you are using older Firefox2 or the older kde3, you won't notice too much laggyness, because Firefox3 and Kde4 uses a lot of 2d accel from xrender
thanks

Anyone?

I compiled eee-modules from dkite pkgbuild, and I can notice that 2d performance is much better in the stock kernel, but I'm having several problems with it, like wifi on-off not working, volume-up-down not working and udev slowness at boot, and one more interesting thing I noticed, 3d performance seems to be better on the toofishes kernel, so it's mainly a problem with 2D acceleration..

Do anyone knows what kernel config can affect 2d performance? I'm looking for it but i don't understand anything about kernel and I couldn't find nothing that may be causing my 2d performance problem

thanks

Jickel · 2008-07-08 21:31:13

zodmaner wrote:

I usually have this in my /etc/rc.local.shutdown when I use mpd:
# Stop mpd daemon
/etc/rc.d/mpd stop

# Stop ALSA daemon first
/etc/rc.d/alsa stop 

# Then
echo -n "0000:00:1b.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/HDA\ Intel/unbind
Hope this help.

I don't use MPD, but the ALSA line did the trick! Thank you!

I don't believe it's included in the wiki; if no one else adds it the coming days, I might just do it myself!

puelocesar · 2008-07-09 15:00:51

puelocesar wrote:

puelocesar wrote:
Hi all, I recently installed Archlinux on my EEE folowing the instructions from the wiki, and I'm very satisfied with boot speed, but I'm having *serious* problems with 2D performance on X11.
I'm using the kernel-eee from toofishes, and intel driver. I tried setting AccelMethod to Xaa and putting "INTEL_BATCH=1" in /etc/environment, and indeed I got some better results, but still my desktop is much slower than the debian I had installed on this machine. I tried using the i810 driver too, but I had the same performance issues.
After googleing a bit, I found this: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=19944
And I experimented booting with Arch's stock kernel, and for my surprise, 2d was very fast again. The problem is that I don't want to use the default kernel, because it loads thousands of modules and udev is slow at boot, and I'll have to compile the dkite's modules, as he does not provide precompiled modules for 2.6.25..
So, I'm asking for help so I can restore 2d performance on toofishes kernel..
obs: If you are using older Firefox2 or the older kde3, you won't notice too much laggyness, because Firefox3 and Kde4 uses a lot of 2d accel from xrender
thanks
Anyone?
I compiled eee-modules from dkite pkgbuild, and I can notice that 2d performance is much better in the stock kernel, but I'm having several problems with it, like wifi on-off not working, volume-up-down not working and udev slowness at boot, and one more interesting thing I noticed, 3d performance seems to be better on the toofishes kernel, so it's mainly a problem with 2D acceleration..
Do anyone knows what kernel config can affect 2d performance? I'm looking for it but i don't understand anything about kernel and I couldn't find nothing that may be causing my 2d performance problem
thanks

Hi all again, I recompiled toofishes kernel with the some options like "CONFIG_DRM=m" and "CONFIG_DRM_I915=m", like I see in some forums, but I continue with the same problem with 2d.. Well, I guess the main problem with this is that Xorg is always with more than 20% of the cpu, then even things that doesn't use X became slow..

Nobody have a tip on what to add or remove on the configs??

I'm having problems with wine too, what options should I change on kernelconfig to make it work? I changed CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y, like i saw earlier on this topic, but it continues saying that kernel memory split error..

berkus · 2008-07-09 17:28:13

JJwalker wrote:

I have a question regarding backing up /dev/sda.
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb.
Then waited for about 2 hours but nothing happend.

I used "dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -9 > backup.img.gz", finished in about under 1 hour.

Jickel · 2008-07-09 17:33:40

puelocesar: Sorry you aven't been getting many answers, but are you sure your kernel is at fault? X is taking nowhere near 20% CPU for me, often much less than 1%, and I'm not experiencing any 2D problems.

Regardin wine and vmsplit, I'm working on it. It might be a lot easier going through make menuconfig though, I have yet to try it. ;P

OH and don't go editing those vmsplits on your own if you don't know what you're doing! I got some corrupted journals and file system sectors that way. Wait 'til someone figures out how do it in in menuconfig. I'll try it tomorrow, probably.

Last edited by Jickel (2008-07-09 21:11:23)

faelar · 2008-07-09 20:24:32

Just would like to say "thank you" again to toofishes for the last kernel-eee update.

puelocesar · 2008-07-09 22:22:54

Jickel wrote:

puelocesar: Sorry you aven't been getting many answers, but are you sure your kernel is at fault? X is taking nowhere near 20% CPU for me, often much less than 1%, and I'm not experiencing any 2D problems.
Regardin wine and vmsplit, I'm working on it. It might be a lot easier going through make menuconfig though, I have yet to try it. ;P

OH and don't go editing those vmsplits on your own if you don't know what you're doing! I got some corrupted journals and file system sectors that way. Wait 'til someone figures out how do it in in menuconfig. I'll try it tomorrow, probably.

Well, actually, I'm using Kde4, that uses *a lot* of xrender, so that's why it's so slow here.. I think you will only notice my problem on software that uses qt4 or cairo intensely ..

I think it's a kernel problem, because if I reboot on arch's default kernel, all my xorg problems are gone ( but many others appear )

oh, and about the vmsplit, I'm comparing toofishes kernelconfig with others .configs, and I think I'll just copy and paste

thanks for the answer

puelocesar · 2008-07-09 22:57:22

I'm thinking it's related to some patch that's not applied on toofishes kernel.. I can see that he only applied the default patch from kernel.org site..

Maybe there is another patch that needs to be aplied.. I will investigate this

Jickel · 2008-07-10 20:13:30

Regarding the patch, somehow I doubt it since we're actually trying to reset the settings to default... but I'm really no expert in this.

ighea · 2008-07-10 20:21:53

I just want to be sure that you guys know about cpu frequency governors?

You can find the rest by yourselves, but with toofishes' kernel-eee (uses ondemand governor default instead of performance) install cpufrequtils and run as root cpufreq-set -g performance and see the diffirence, if that's the case.

Jickel · 2008-07-10 22:11:10

ighea: Are you referring to my old overclock question? I am using cpu frequency governors already, dynamically scaling between 563 and 900, I was just wondering if it really bumped the speed to a true 900 MHz just like that or if I needed to take more steps to enable it, like earlier in this thread. I haven't really benchmarked it yet though.

Menuconfig is really neat! I'll experiment more with it this weekend, but if you other "newbies" want to try it, just git clone toofishes repository (as has been explained earlier in this thread) and change "make silentoldconfig" or similar in the PKGBUILD to "make menuconfig", then go on as you usually would to compile. A neato interface will pop up where you can set all the different options and also have them explained to you.

Last edited by Jickel (2008-07-10 22:11:51)

toofishes · 2008-07-11 02:41:57

Jickel wrote:

ighea: Are you referring to my old overclock question? I am using cpu frequency governors already, dynamically scaling between 563 and 900, I was just wondering if it really bumped the speed to a true 900 MHz just like that or if I needed to take more steps to enable it, like earlier in this thread. I haven't really benchmarked it yet though.
Menuconfig is really neat! I'll experiment more with it this weekend, but if you other "newbies" want to try it, just git clone toofishes repository (as has been explained earlier in this thread) and change "make silentoldconfig" or similar in the PKGBUILD to "make menuconfig", then go on as you usually would to compile. A neato interface will pop up where you can set all the different options and also have them explained to you.

I guess I can share how I actually do it. Make sure you get all the sources downloaded (makepkg -o), and then manually run the first few steps of the build function- cd into the linux src/ directory, patch the correct things in, and copy kernelconfig to .config. Then simply run make menuconfig and adjust. I then copy it back to kernelconfig, run a git diff to make sure I only changed what I wanted to, then regenerate the md5sums and build as normal. This ensures the build is completely automated and more importantly reproducible- I won't lose one-time config changes.

puelocesar · 2008-07-11 02:44:26

Well, I'm using eee module to set FSB to 100, and the clock to 900Mhz

I know it's at 900 because glxgears jump from 460 to 650

And the strange thing here is that I have good 3d performance, but bad 2d performance.. I just can't understand that

puelocesar · 2008-07-11 02:49:08

Well, I loved the kernel-eee from toolfishes, but with these unsolved problems with 2d i think i'll just give up and try to use the default kernel...

One more thing, am I supposed to install anything so I can use joysticks on arch? I'm comming from debian and I didn't need anything installed.. it doesn't work even with default kernel....

dninja · 2008-07-11 07:19:10

How are people measuring 2D performance? Mine is noticeably slow when redrawing a screen if I jump from desktop to another in fluxbox, does that count as slow 2D?

Jickel · 2008-07-11 12:50:17

puelocesar and rpdrake: This didn't strike me until now as I thought it was pretty obvious, but did you know that toofish's kernel (I think it's in the kernel) dynamically clocks your processor down to 113 MHz and only clocks it up at 80% load? Follow the advice at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … d_governor to change it. 40% works fine for me.

In fact, come to think of it I'm now pretty certain this is your issue, as I was also bothered by slow 2D-performance (aka X performance) when I started out using this kernel. I was following the guide though so I wasn't too worried about it.

Edit: OH, so this was what ighea was talking about further up on this page! :D

Last edited by Jickel (2008-07-11 12:57:56)

puelocesar · 2008-07-11 13:12:30

Jickel wrote:

puelocesar and rpdrake: This didn't strike me until now as I thought it was pretty obvious, but did you know that toofish's kernel (I think it's in the kernel) dynamically clocks your processor down to 113 MHz and only clocks it up at 80% load? Follow the advice at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … d_governor to change it. 40% works fine for me.
In fact, come to think of it I'm now pretty certain this is your issue, as I was also bothered by slow 2D-performance (aka X performance) when I started out using this kernel. I was following the guide though so I wasn't too worried about it.

Edit: OH, so this was what ighea was talking about further up on this page!

Well, I'm using eee module to set FSB to 100, and the clock to 900Mhz
I know it's at 900 because glxgears jump from 460 to 650
And the strange thing here is that I have good 3d performance, but bad 2d performance.. I just can't understand that

thanks for reply Jickel, but, like I already said, i'm using that eee module that let you adjust the fsb and fan, and I tested performance with my FSB at 100, and my clock at 900.. and again, like I said, I'm pretty sure that my clock is at 900, because glxgears jump from 460 to 650, like it always did on my eeepc using other distros..

For people who was asking about how I measure it, well, that's not scientific, but the difference is so big, that is visually noticeable.. I actually have kde4 installed, who heavilly uses 2d accell, so I just open a terminal window, run 'top', and start to open windows, move, etc, and I see xorg using all my cpu..

The funny part, is when I just open the terminal window, use top, and just start moving the mouse pointer insanelly fast Xorg proccess goes from 2,3% to 30% !!! just moving the mouse!!

Jickel · 2008-07-11 14:15:28

puelocesar: With xfce4 with/without compiz enabled, I get X using around 13% CPU at 563MHz when moving around the pointer fast. Just so you know!

puelocesar · 2008-07-11 14:25:16

Mouse pointers are evil!!! lol

Well, I'm just testing on stock kernel, the maximum I got was 5%.. And it was on KDE4, with clock at 600mhz

And I tested until I got tired!!

Well, the new krunner is a goot test too, because it has many animations.. On stock kernel I got smooth animations, and with the custom kernel, animation is choppy... And I'm think it's because xrender..

Does anyone knows about some patch or kernel config that affects xrender?

puelocesar · 2008-07-12 19:56:25

Yeah, I'm using stock kernel now.. 2d much faster, but many many problems.. everything freezes for some seconds when my wireless is connecting, my wireless conection is not reliable anymore, and boot time is slow... life's hard

I think my next step is to compile everything myself.. I'll post a how-to for those who had the same problem (yeah, it's not only with me)

But the most important, I could never found what in the kernel affects the xrender performance.. Maybe TTM? I didn't found any clues on how to enable TTM...

ighea · 2008-07-12 20:28:53

puelocesar wrote:

Yeah, I'm using stock kernel now.. 2d much faster, but many many problems.. everything freezes for some seconds when my wireless is connecting, my wireless conection is not reliable anymore, and boot time is slow... life's hard
I think my next step is to compile everything myself.. I'll post a how-to for those who had the same problem (yeah, it's not only with me)
But the most important, I could never found what in the kernel affects the xrender performance.. Maybe TTM? I didn't found any clues on how to enable TTM...

One magical line on both kernel-eee and stock kernel.. execute it and notice the diffirence...

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Post the results.

Last edited by ighea (2008-07-12 20:29:29)

puelocesar · 2008-07-12 21:13:25

ighea wrote:

puelocesar wrote:
Yeah, I'm using stock kernel now.. 2d much faster, but many many problems.. everything freezes for some seconds when my wireless is connecting, my wireless conection is not reliable anymore, and boot time is slow... life's hard
I think my next step is to compile everything myself.. I'll post a how-to for those who had the same problem (yeah, it's not only with me)
But the most important, I could never found what in the kernel affects the xrender performance.. Maybe TTM? I didn't found any clues on how to enable TTM...
One magical line on both kernel-eee and stock kernel.. execute it and notice the diffirence...
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
Post the results.

Man, how many times I have to say I'm using the eeepc overclocked to 900mhz with this:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:overclockfsb

Man it's at 900mhz!

How many times I have to say that the ONLY thing that's slow is 2d rendering?? Everything else is fast, even 3d, which one is even faster then on the stock kernel.. I's NOT a problem with my clock

Last edited by puelocesar (2008-07-12 21:15:51)

puelocesar · 2008-07-12 22:23:22

ok ok I'm a total asshole... cpufreq solved the problem... BUT.. still doesn't make sense to me, since my clock was at 900mhz and my glxgears was very high (i know its not a good benchmark, but on the same system, a jump from 450fps to 650fps is still a good measure of performance...)

oh well, it wasn't a total waste of time... at least I managed to fix the wine problem messing with the kernelconfig..

thanks everybody for the patience... and sorry.. I feel ashamed now..

(I think now I'll have to change my nickname and pretend to be other person )

ighea · 2008-07-12 22:37:29

puelocesar wrote:

ok ok I'm a total asshole... cpufreq solved the problem... BUT.. still doesn't make sense to me, since my clock was at 900mhz and my glxgears was very high (i know its not a good benchmark, but on the same system, a jump from 450fps to 650fps is still a good measure of performance...)
oh well, it wasn't a total waste of time... at least I managed to fix the wine problem messing with the kernelconfig..
thanks everybody for the patience... and sorry.. I feel ashamed now..
(I think now I'll have to change my nickname and pretend to be other person )

You may have set your eee's maximum cpu frequency higher than before, but there is still this funny little cpu frequency governor fellow lurking around, who will automatically scale up and down the cpu frequency as needed to save power. See it yourself with cpufreq-info app from cpufrequtils package.

puelocesar · 2008-07-13 01:41:42

yeah, I did that.. god dammit!

Well, but now I have everything I wanted, a fast system with everything I want running! That's very nice

And man, this ArchLinux is great! Once configured everything is so fast, pacman is so pratical and intelligent! And until now I didn't found any dependency nonsense I was so accustomed on ubuntu and debian

well, i still had to recompile kernel-eee because of wine, but it was a breeze after i started understanding pkgbuild.. It's a very nice tool

I got my conclusions now, Archlinux is the perfect match for me and my EeePC

thanks everybody!

Arch Linux

#876 2008-07-08 20:41:04

Re: Arch on Eee PC

#877 2008-07-08 21:31:13

Re: Arch on Eee PC

#878 2008-07-09 15:00:51

Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

#880 2008-07-09 17:33:40

Re: Arch on Eee PC

#881 2008-07-09 20:24:32

Re: Arch on Eee PC

#882 2008-07-09 22:22:54

Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

#887 2008-07-11 02:41:57

Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

#889 2008-07-11 02:49:08

Re: Arch on Eee PC

#890 2008-07-11 07:19:10

Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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Re: Arch on Eee PC

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