[gentoo-user] May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[gentoo-user] May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[James Homuth]

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I just got Gnome set up completely on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB of RAM
running on a P4, and am sort of halfway in the middle of playing with it. In
the process, I'm discovering I still need to install a few things. Just one
problem. I emerge said things, and the system flatlines until such time as
the compilation(s) are done--load is currently sitting at 2.1+. Are there
any make.conf settings I can tweak so that I can still actually use the
system while things compile, or would I be better off setting things to
compile, throwing in a movie, and coming back when they're done? Thanks for
any pointers.

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Re: [gentoo-user] May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:54 AM, James Homuth<james@the-jdh.com> wrote:
> I just got Gnome set up completely on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB of RAM
> running on a P4, and am sort of halfway in the middle of playing with it. In
> the process, I'm discovering I still need to install a few things. Just one
> problem. I emerge said things, and the system flatlines until such time as
> the compilation(s) are done--load is currently sitting at 2.1+. Are there
> any make.conf settings I can tweak so that I can still actually use the
> system while things compile, or would I be better off setting things to
> compile, throwing in a movie, and coming back when they're done? Thanks for
> any pointers.

I've always set portage niceness to 19 (the maximum) on every Gentoo
system I've ever built and compiling is usually not noticeable at all.
I think in your case the biggest problem would be RAM, since compiling
often uses hundreds of megs at a time.

[gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/21/2009 07:54 PM, James Homuth wrote:
>
> I just got Gnome set up completely on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB of
> RAM running on a P4, and am sort of halfway in the middle of playing
> with it. In the process, I'm discovering I still need to install a few
> things. Just one problem. I emerge said things, and the system flatlines
> until such time as the compilation(s) are done--load is currently
> sitting at 2.1+. Are there any make.conf settings I can tweak so that I
> can still actually use the system while things compile, or would I be
> better off setting things to compile, throwing in a movie, and coming
> back when they're done? Thanks for any pointers.

Not sure if something changed in recent kernels, but 19 used to be the 
most efficient value since processes running at 19 are considered batch 
jobs.  They get plenty of CPU time due to longer time-slices 
(responsiveness suffers, but you don't care about portage being 
responsive in the first place, so it's optimal.)  So:

   PORTAGE_NICENESS=19

Is best.  However, also very important is "I/O nice".  Setting an ionice 
value of "idle" will result in portage not blocking your other 
applications whey they need to do disk I/O:

   PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}"

This needs a kernel newer than 2.6.16 and it has to be configured to use 
the CFQ scheduler.  You know if that's the case if this command:

   zgrep CFQ /proc/config.gz

says:

   CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
   CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ=y

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Arttu V.]

On 8/21/09, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> However, also very important is "I/O nice".  Setting an ionice
> value of "idle" will result in portage not blocking your other
> applications whey they need to do disk I/O:
>
>    PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}"

Yes, as it is a laptop, it's likely to have a slow 5400 RPM disk. I
have a nearly same-spec old laptop (~5.5 yo, P4m 2.2GHz, 256+256MB
RAM), but I haven't had much trouble with portage emerges on it. Only
when something big is due to in the I/O (lots of swapping due to the
small RAM, kernel sources being unpacked, 100+ MB file transfer over
from LAN etc) has there been slowness which has been annoying.

Given the open nature of OP's question I'm also offering
MAKEOPTS="-j1". It's not really that much a "speed optimization" (on
the contrary?), but another way to try to keep the disk I/O and CPU to
yourself -- even if the compiles will take a bit longer on the
background. (And this ionice thing I got to try as well on that old
clunker, thanks for the tip!)

-- 
Arttu V.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[meino.cramer]

> 
>   PORTAGE_NICENESS=19
> 
> Is best.  However, also very important is "I/O nice".  Setting an 
> ionice value of "idle" will result in portage not blocking your other 
> applications whey they need to do disk I/O:
> 
>   PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}"
> 
> This needs a kernel newer than 2.6.16 and it has to be configured to 
> use the CFQ scheduler.  You know if that's the case if this command:
> 
>   zgrep CFQ /proc/config.gz
> 
> says:
> 
>   CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
>   CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ=y
> 

Hi,
where can I set PORTAGE_NICENESS and PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND ?

Kind regards,
mcc

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unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text.
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Dale]

meino.cramer@gmx.de wrote:
>>   PORTAGE_NICENESS=19
>>
>> Is best.  However, also very important is "I/O nice".  Setting an 
>> ionice value of "idle" will result in portage not blocking your other 
>> applications whey they need to do disk I/O:
>>
>>   PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}"
>>
>> This needs a kernel newer than 2.6.16 and it has to be configured to 
>> use the CFQ scheduler.  You know if that's the case if this command:
>>
>>   zgrep CFQ /proc/config.gz
>>
>> says:
>>
>>   CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
>>   CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ=y
>>
>>     
>
> Hi,
> where can I set PORTAGE_NICENESS and PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND ?
>
> Kind regards,
> mcc
>
>   

In your make.conf file. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 6:58 PM, <meino.cramer@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> where can I set PORTAGE_NICENESS and PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND ?
>
> Kind regards,
> mcc

In /etc/make.conf

RE: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[James Homuth]

 

-----Original Message-----
From: news [mailto:news@ger.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Nikos Chantziaras
Sent: August 21, 2009 1:50 PM
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for
Portage while using Gnome?

On 08/21/2009 07:54 PM, James Homuth wrote:
>
> I just got Gnome set up completely on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB 
> of RAM running on a P4, and am sort of halfway in the middle of 
> playing with it. In the process, I'm discovering I still need to 
> install a few things. Just one problem. I emerge said things, and the 
> system flatlines until such time as the compilation(s) are done--load 
> is currently sitting at 2.1+. Are there any make.conf settings I can 
> tweak so that I can still actually use the system while things 
> compile, or would I be better off setting things to compile, throwing 
> in a movie, and coming back when they're done? Thanks for any pointers.

Not sure if something changed in recent kernels, but 19 used to be the most
efficient value since processes running at 19 are considered batch jobs.
They get plenty of CPU time due to longer time-slices (responsiveness
suffers, but you don't care about portage being responsive in the first
place, so it's optimal.)  So:

   PORTAGE_NICENESS=19

Is best.  However, also very important is "I/O nice".  Setting an ionice
value of "idle" will result in portage not blocking your other applications
whey they need to do disk I/O:

   PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}"

This needs a kernel newer than 2.6.16 and it has to be configured to use the
CFQ scheduler.  You know if that's the case if this command:

   zgrep CFQ /proc/config.gz

says:

   CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
   CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ=y


It does not. I was thinking about upgrading to 2.6.30 anyway, so which
switch would I throw to enable it?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[Paul Hartman]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 12:06 PM, James Homuth<james@the-jdh.com> wrote:
>   CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ=y
>   CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ=y
>
>
> It does not. I was thinking about upgrading to 2.6.30 anyway, so which
> switch would I throw to enable it?

In menuconfig:

Enable the block layer
- IO Schedulers
-- CFQ I/O Scheduler
-- Default IO Scheduler (CFQ)