[gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[William Kenworthy]

Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
desktop.

Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
load for desktop operations!

To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).

Really, really, really neat!
BillK


-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!

Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
> barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
> it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
> time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
> desktop.
>
> Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
> gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
> load for desktop operations!
>
> To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
> emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
> evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
> tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
>
> Really, really, really neat!
> BillK

Very cool indeed.

Which kernel did you choose? ck-sources? Something else?

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[William Kenworthy]

On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:20 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
> > barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
> > it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
> > time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
> > desktop.
> >
> > Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
> > gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
> > load for desktop operations!
> >
> > To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
> > emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
> > evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
> > tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
> >
> > Really, really, really neat!
> > BillK
> 
> Very cool indeed.
> 
> Which kernel did you choose? ck-sources? Something else?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
> 

gentoo-sources 2.6.34, just finished compiling 2.6.36 (all manually
configured)

BillK


-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!

[gentoo-user] Re: cgroupd really do work!

[walt]

On 12/03/2010 04:41 PM, William Kenworthy wrote:
> Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
> barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
> it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
> time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
> desktop.
>
> Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
> gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
> load for desktop operations!
>
> To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
> emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
> evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
> tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).

I would expect some disk swapping activity when running all those apps in
1.5GB of RAM.  Are you seeing any?

Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 6:16 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:20 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> > Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
>> > barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
>> > it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
>> > time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
>> > desktop.
>> >
>> > Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
>> > gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
>> > load for desktop operations!
>> >
>> > To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
>> > emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
>> > evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
>> > tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
>> >
>> > Really, really, really neat!
>> > BillK
>>
>> Very cool indeed.
>>
>> Which kernel did you choose? ck-sources? Something else?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Mark
>>
>
> gentoo-sources 2.6.34, just finished compiling 2.6.36 (all manually
> configured)
>
> BillK

If you're up for it maybe try putting doing a Gentoo Wiki page.

Sounds like it's working pretty well. I'd like to try it but I don't
have much time to focus on digging out the info.

Congrats!
-Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: cgroupd really do work!

[William Kenworthy]

On Sat, 2010-12-04 at 11:52 -0800, walt wrote:
> On 12/03/2010 04:41 PM, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
> > barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
> > it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
> > time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
> > desktop.
> >
> > Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
> > gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
> > load for desktop operations!
> >
> > To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
> > emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
> > evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
> > tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
> 
> I would expect some disk swapping activity when running all those apps in
> 1.5GB of RAM.  Are you seeing any?
> 
> 

yes, a lot as expected (multiple disks using LVM) so no attempt to
configure the disks for high performance.  The compiles were quite slow,
but thats fine because I could still use the desktop.  The only
interactive app that didnt work well was the win2k instance running in
qemu - it did work, though slowly, and when the other jobs were over and
it could get more cpu time it came back to around normal.  qemu is
somewhat borderline on this machine in any case - been on it for 6-7
years though :)

Some apps that were swapped out had a very short delay while the pages
were retrieved (mainly noticable on firefox), but the before/after
impression was the difference between a very short pause and what used
to happen - time to take the hand off the mouse and lean back in the
chair and wait for FF to catch up.

Keep in mind this is a relatively low memory, very old/slow 32 bit
system I am using.

and after running this for a couple of days, yes, I am still happy with
it and this gives the old beast a new lease on life :)

BillK

-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!

Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 04.12.2010 22:00, schrieb Mark Knecht:
> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 6:16 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:20 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>>> Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
>>>> barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
>>>> it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
>>>> time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
>>>> desktop.
>>>>
>>>> Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
>>>> gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
>>>> load for desktop operations!
>>>>
>>>> To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
>>>> emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
>>>> evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
>>>> tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
>>>>
>>>> Really, really, really neat!
>>>> BillK
>>>
[...]
> 
> If you're up for it maybe try putting doing a Gentoo Wiki page.
> 
> Sounds like it's working pretty well. I'd like to try it but I don't
> have much time to focus on digging out the info.
> 
> Congrats!
> -Mark
> 

As you wish:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Improve_responsiveness_with_cgroups

I welcome any improvements. This is my first wiki article and English is
not my mother tongue.

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 6:55 AM, Florian Philipp
<lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> wrote:
> Am 04.12.2010 22:00, schrieb Mark Knecht:
>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 6:16 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:20 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>>>> Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
>>>>> barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
>>>>> it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
>>>>> time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
>>>>> desktop.
>>>>>
>>>>> Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
>>>>> gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
>>>>> load for desktop operations!
>>>>>
>>>>> To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
>>>>> emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
>>>>> evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
>>>>> tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
>>>>>
>>>>> Really, really, really neat!
>>>>> BillK
>>>>
> [...]
>>
>> If you're up for it maybe try putting doing a Gentoo Wiki page.
>>
>> Sounds like it's working pretty well. I'd like to try it but I don't
>> have much time to focus on digging out the info.
>>
>> Congrats!
>> -Mark
>>
>
> As you wish:
> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Improve_responsiveness_with_cgroups
>
> I welcome any improvements. This is my first wiki article and English is
> not my mother tongue.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Florian Philipp
>
>

VERY nice start! Thanks!

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 05.12.2010 15:55, schrieb Florian Philipp:
> Am 04.12.2010 22:00, schrieb Mark Knecht:
>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 6:16 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 17:20 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>>>> Re the discussion on cgroups on the 24/25 november - on my old AMD
>>>>> barton 2500+ desktop - in the past a load of anything more than 5 made
>>>>> it very painful to use.  Add in running windows in a qemu vm at the same
>>>>> time (all in 1.5G ram) and its almost unusable as an interactive
>>>>> desktop.
>>>>>
>>>>> Now, with Florians (thanks for the scripts) version of using it on
>>>>> gentoo, even at a load in excess of 12, its almost as good as with no
>>>>> load for desktop operations!
>>>>>
>>>>> To get the high load I am compiling a new kernel, running win2k in qemu,
>>>>> emerging latest updates, browsing the web and reading email in
>>>>> evolution, running updatedb and other cron jobs (just restarted after a
>>>>> tuxonice hibernate so everything is triggering at once!).
>>>>>
>>>>> Really, really, really neat!
>>
>> If you're up for it maybe try putting doing a Gentoo Wiki page.
>>
>> Sounds like it's working pretty well. I'd like to try it but I don't
>> have much time to focus on digging out the info.

> 
> As you wish:
> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Improve_responsiveness_with_cgroups
> 
> I welcome any improvements. This is my first wiki article and English is
> not my mother tongue.
> 

Hmm, I just noticed that something is not right here: Everything works
fine as long as I limit the cgroups to cpu scheduling (`mount -t cgroup
cgroup /dev/cgroup -o cpu`). As soon as I add the blkio subsystem for
disk I/O scheduling ("-o cpu,blkio" or no "-o" at all), I can no longer
create cgroup hierarchies. Only the top level "user" cgroup is accepted.

Another issue is that the kernel documentation in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt specifies that the
release_agent can also be included as a mount option with
`mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup -o
cpu,release_agent='/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean'`
That seems to be no valid option, though. At least on my system it
causes mount to fail. Unfortunately there is no output on dmesg.

Can someone else reproduce this? I'm on gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r12.

Thanks in advance!
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Bill Longman]

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>
> Hmm, I just noticed that something is not right here: Everything works
> fine as long as I limit the cgroups to cpu scheduling (`mount -t cgroup
> cgroup /dev/cgroup -o cpu`). As soon as I add the blkio subsystem for
> disk I/O scheduling ("-o cpu,blkio" or no "-o" at all), I can no longer
> create cgroup hierarchies. Only the top level "user" cgroup is accepted.
>
> Another issue is that the kernel documentation in
> /usr/src/linux/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt specifies that the
> release_agent can also be included as a mount option with
> `mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup -o
> cpu,release_agent='/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean'`
> That seems to be no valid option, though. At least on my system it
> causes mount to fail. Unfortunately there is no output on dmesg.
>
> Can someone else reproduce this? I'm on gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r12.
>
>
I had this very same problem when I was trying this last year, Florian. I
didn't pursue it any further so I can't tell you any solutions. I do
remember it though because it was quite frustrating.

-- 
Bill Longman

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Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 06.12.2010 00:54, schrieb Bill Longman:
> 
> 
>     Hmm, I just noticed that something is not right here: Everything works
>     fine as long as I limit the cgroups to cpu scheduling (`mount -t cgroup
>     cgroup /dev/cgroup -o cpu`). As soon as I add the blkio subsystem for
>     disk I/O scheduling ("-o cpu,blkio" or no "-o" at all), I can no longer
>     create cgroup hierarchies. Only the top level "user" cgroup is accepted.
> 
>     Another issue is that the kernel documentation in
>     /usr/src/linux/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt specifies that the
>     release_agent can also be included as a mount option with
>     `mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup -o
>     cpu,release_agent='/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean'`
>     That seems to be no valid option, though. At least on my system it
>     causes mount to fail. Unfortunately there is no output on dmesg.
> 
>     Can someone else reproduce this? I'm on gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r12.
> 
> 
> I had this very same problem when I was trying this last year, Florian.
> I didn't pursue it any further so I can't tell you any solutions. I do
> remember it though because it was quite frustrating.
> 
> -- 
> Bill Longman

Thanks for the answer!

I think I've found the answer, at least for the first issue: Look at
this bug: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15980

I still don't know what causes the second issue.

Regards,
Florian Philipp


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[gentoo-user] Re: cgroupd really do work!

[Doug Hunley]

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Thanks a ton for the wiki page! I 'smartened' up the scripts a bit to deal
with the various locations and kernel versions:
cgroup_clean:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -d /sys/fs/cgroup ] ; then
  cdir=/sys/fs/cgroup
else
  cdir=/dev/cgroup
fi

rmdir /dev/cgroup/$*

cgroup_start:
#!/bin/sh

if [ -d /sys/fs/cgroup ] ; then
  cdir=/sys/fs/cgroup
else
  cdir=/dev/cgroup
  mkdir $cdir
fi

kern_version=`uname -r|cut -d\- -f1|tr -d '.'`
if [ $kern_version -lt 2638 ] ; then
  mount -t cgroup cgroup $cdir -o cpu
else
  mount -t cgroup cgroup $cdir -o cpu,blkio
fi

mkdir -m 0777 $cdir/user

/bin/echo '/root/bin/cgroup_clean' > $cdir/release_agent

bashrc:
# Turn on cgroups
if [ "$PS1" ] ; then
  if [ -d /sys/fs/cgroup ] ; then
    cdir=/sys/fs/cgroup
  else
    cdir=/dev/cgroup
  fi

  mkdir -p -m 0700 $cdir/user/$$ > /dev/null 2>&1
  /bin/echo $$ > $cdir/user/$$/tasks
  /bin/echo '1' > $cdir/user/$$/notify_on_release
fi


Hope someone finds that useful.

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[gentoo-user] Re: cgroupd really do work!

[Doug Hunley]

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On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 15:04, Doug Hunley <doug@hunley.homeip.net> wrote:

> cgroup_clean:
> #!/bin/sh
> if [ -d /sys/fs/cgroup ] ; then
>   cdir=/sys/fs/cgroup
> else
>   cdir=/dev/cgroup
> fi
>
> rmdir /dev/cgroup/$*
>

change that to: rmdir $cdir/$*

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: cgroupd really do work!

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 06.12.2010 21:04, schrieb Doug Hunley:
> Thanks a ton for the wiki page! I 'smartened' up the scripts a bit to
> deal with the various locations and kernel versions:
[...]
> 
> Hope someone finds that useful.

Sure, nice extension. Since it is your code, please apply it to the wiki
page yourself. You don't need my approval for this. ;)

One slight improvement: Add a line `unset -v cdir` to the end of the
.bashrc inclusion. cdir is not needed afterwards but will remain as a
shell variable if it is not deleted.

Regards,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Scott Prager]

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On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Florian Philipp <
lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> wrote:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Improve_responsiveness_with_cgroups
>
> I welcome any improvements. This is my first wiki article and English is
> not my mother tongue.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Florian Philipp
>
>
This is my first post on this mailing list, so please correct me if this is
in any way the wrong place.

I found that /etc/conf.d/local.start was not on my system like the article
seems to expect. /etc/conf.d/local local was and it already had two
functions, local_start and _stop, which seemed to be what local.start was
supposed to be. And using /etc/conf.d/local.start did not work
whereas /etc/conf.d/local did.

Did i do something wrong in fallowing the article, do some systems use
local.start and some just local, or is there something else?

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Re: [gentoo-user] cgroupd really do work!

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 7 Dec 2010 00:51:10 -0500, Scott Prager wrote:

> I found that /etc/conf.d/local.start was not on my system like the
> article seems to expect. /etc/conf.d/local local was and it already had
> two functions, local_start and _stop, which seemed to be what
> local.start was supposed to be. And using /etc/conf.d/local.start did
> not work whereas /etc/conf.d/local did.

Baselayout1 uses local.start and local.stop, baselayout 2 uses start and
stop functions in a single local file. AFAIR baselayout 2 will look for
local.start and local.stop, but only if local does not exist, or it used
to.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.

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