From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MeYFp-0003ly-Dc for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:21 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CD8CBE01EC; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:19 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF367E01EC for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:19 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7291674C6 for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:21 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -3.039 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.039 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=-0.440, BAYES_00=-2.599] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 1JkfbR5m-eiO for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C30F5674B7 for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1MeYFb-0003Uc-E9 for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:50:07 +0200 Received: from athedsl-377308.home.otenet.gr ([79.131.25.218]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:50:07 +0200 Received: from realnc by athedsl-377308.home.otenet.gr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:50:07 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org From: Nikos Chantziaras Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome? Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:49:47 +0300 Organization: Lucas Barks Message-ID: References: <35d301ca2280$142ecc50$6400a8c0@quan> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: athedsl-377308.home.otenet.gr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090815 Thunderbird/3.0b3 In-Reply-To: <35d301ca2280$142ecc50$6400a8c0@quan> Sender: news X-Archives-Salt: a5b9eefe-add1-4719-9a1a-64f51e38b087 X-Archives-Hash: ae36d2edc6236014075f92b39e52037d 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