Alternative "Initscripts" for OpenMandriva 2014.2 & ROSA R6

Latest shouts directly from our packagers and call for public testing MIB packages
Post Reply
User avatar
NicCo
Amministratore
Amministratore
Posts: 4765
Joined: 6 December 2007, 19:54

Alternative "Initscripts" for OpenMandriva 2014.2 & ROSA R6

Post by NicCo »

OpenMandriva is currently using a rather extreme configuration for Swappiness, with values heavily optimized for a desktop use:
this has been made some time ago to override different troubles with Firefox hanging when multiple tables were open at once...

these configuration changed mainly the swappiness values, and something else...


Giuseppe Ghibò has informed me that these configuration, in some conditions may have some bad sideeffects on the overall performances of a PC, so he has restored these values to their default values, and has offered us the chance to test this with his rpms

for OpenMandriva 2014 - 64bit
http://abf-downloads.rosalinux.ru/ghibo ... x86_64.rpm

for OpenMandriva 2014 - 32bit
http://abf-downloads.rosalinux.ru/ghibo ... 0.i586.rpm
.
--- Professional experience ---
Kernel designer, engineer, maintainer and tester for ROSA Desktop and OpenMandriva Lx O.S.

--- currently I'm playing with ---
LTS Kernels > Linux 4.1.12-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.18.17-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.14.46-nrjQL
EOL Kernels > Linux 3.19.8-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.17.8-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.15.10-nrjQL

User avatar
NicCo
Amministratore
Amministratore
Posts: 4765
Joined: 6 December 2007, 19:54

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by NicCo »

I suggest to try these rpms:
then inform us what changes are for you (it works better or worser?)...
.
--- Professional experience ---
Kernel designer, engineer, maintainer and tester for ROSA Desktop and OpenMandriva Lx O.S.

--- currently I'm playing with ---
LTS Kernels > Linux 4.1.12-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.18.17-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.14.46-nrjQL
EOL Kernels > Linux 3.19.8-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.17.8-nrjQL <<< Linux 3.15.10-nrjQL

User avatar
mandian
Nuovo utente
Nuovo utente
Posts: 1
Joined: 11 July 2015, 10:45
ROSA: -
OpenMandriva: 2014.2
Kernel: 3.18.16
Desktop: MATE
country: it

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by mandian »

My main problem was that when I compiled with java from my cooker chroot hosted on a omv2014 all the memory was occupied and most of the swap too so my pc became very slow whit some temporary freeze. But using an old not updated chroot java ran smooth so it was a java problem. In fact on last Monday I received an update for java which solves this problem. :)

In any way I installed this alternative initscript package because when I use a lot of firefox tab and libreoffice and some other program such as jabref the pc became very slow (I haven't so many ram inside, just 2Gb). IMHO with the new initscript configs it work better because I don't experience freeze any more and it never became so slow that mouse and keyboard freeze.

Maybe you can interest I'm using the kernel 3.18.16-nrjQL-laptop-2omv,

bye,
mandian

User avatar
oiram73
Utente senior
Utente senior
Posts: 405
Joined: 5 January 2009, 13:33
ROSA: -
OpenMandriva: 2014
Kernel: 3.19.8-nrjQL-realtim
Desktop: KDE 4.14.3
country: Italia
Location: Perugia
Contact:

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by oiram73 »

Hi!
I installed this rpm for about a week: memory consumption has been reduced considerably; also they broke down the Frezze temporary speed and lock the keyboard and mouse. And that's good!
;)
OMA-2014
oiram/bin/selom
Da ognuno secondo le proprie capacità ad ognuno secondo i propri bisogni!

User avatar
benbullard79
Utente junior
Utente junior
Posts: 73
Joined: 8 April 2012, 19:52
ROSA: None
OpenMandriva: 2014.2, Cooker
Kernel: 4.1.12-nrjQL
Desktop: KDE4,Plasma5
country: US
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by benbullard79 »

For testing how to downgrade to the OMV initscripts after installing this one. I try:

Code: Select all

# urpmi --debug --downgrade initscripts
...
getting exclusive lock on rpm
search_packages: found initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64 matching initscripts
search_packages: skip initscripts-9.52-4-omv2014.0.x86_64 matching initscripts since newer version of the package exists in repositories
found package(s): initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64 initscripts-9.52-4-omv2014.0.x86_64
opening rpmdb (root=, write=)
no packages match initscripts|initscripts (it is either in skip.list or already rejected)
no packages match initscripts (it is either in skip.list or already rejected)

# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64
No package named initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1

No package named initscripts-9.53-1

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53
[root@localhost ~]# urpmi initscripts-9.53-1.6

# urpmi --downgrade initscripts
Isn't --downgrade supposed to work? I must be missing something here.
Thanks,
Ben
aka: ben79

User avatar
benbullard79
Utente junior
Utente junior
Posts: 73
Joined: 8 April 2012, 19:52
ROSA: None
OpenMandriva: 2014.2, Cooker
Kernel: 4.1.12-nrjQL
Desktop: KDE4,Plasma5
country: US
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by benbullard79 »

benbullard79 wrote:For testing how to downgrade to the OMV initscripts after installing this one. I try:

Code: Select all

# urpmi --debug --downgrade initscripts
...
getting exclusive lock on rpm
search_packages: found initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64 matching initscripts
search_packages: skip initscripts-9.52-4-omv2014.0.x86_64 matching initscripts since newer version of the package exists in repositories
found package(s): initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64 initscripts-9.52-4-omv2014.0.x86_64
opening rpmdb (root=, write=)
no packages match initscripts|initscripts (it is either in skip.list or already rejected)
no packages match initscripts (it is either in skip.list or already rejected)

# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64
No package named initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1

No package named initscripts-9.53-1

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53-1.6

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --downgrade initscripts-9.53
[root@localhost ~]# urpmi initscripts-9.53-1.6

# urpmi --downgrade initscripts
Isn't --downgrade supposed to work? I must be missing something here.
benbullard79 you blithering idiot when's the last time you used the rpm command. Dumb ass!

Code: Select all

# rpm -Uhv --oldpackage initscripts-9.53-1.6-omv2014.0.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:initscripts            ########################################### [100%]
Thanks,
Ben
aka: ben79

User avatar
benbullard79
Utente junior
Utente junior
Posts: 73
Joined: 8 April 2012, 19:52
ROSA: None
OpenMandriva: 2014.2, Cooker
Kernel: 4.1.12-nrjQL
Desktop: KDE4,Plasma5
country: US
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by benbullard79 »

OK, I need to learn some stuff about this. What does this package change besides swappiness? Is swappiness set in /proc/sys/vm/swappiness? Regardless of which initscripts package I have installed I always get:

Code: Select all

# cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
10
So what am I missing? So far I haven't really tested this very well. Just tested with multiple apps open and normal everyday user stuff and I don't see any difference in the 2 initscripts. Not saying this isn't a valid issue just that I haven't seen it for myself yet.

Edit: I did a fresh install of 2014.2 in VBox and there swappiness is also set to 10.
Thanks,
Ben
aka: ben79

User avatar
joeghi
Nuovo utente
Nuovo utente
Posts: 5
Joined: 27 September 2014, 16:46
ROSA: -
OpenMandriva: 2010.2
Kernel: 3.15.10-nrjQL-realti
Desktop: KDE
country: Italy

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by joeghi »

Dear ben,

The vm.swappiness is a kernel parameter that control the "tendency" of
the kernel to swap or to use the swap space. Here is a better
explanation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness

Over the years, speculations were made about which value was better,
someone says that it's better to swap, someone says that it's
better to not swap (because have plenty of RAM and wants to preserve the
disks or the SSDs) and so on. Some tweaking guide around the web
advice to alter to a value of 0 or 10 to get better performance
(performance in the sense of responsiveness of a desktop system), some
other guide instead advice to leave the default value. Some further
guide says that is anyway obsolete and it's no longer used to promote
or disable the swapping anyway. There is not a final word on this and
one can do advocacy and speculations forever.

The default value is 60 and it's set internally to the kernel. To
alter such value you can either do as root:

echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

and that works until you change again or do a reboot. Under OMV
2014.1/2 (dunno about cooker), the default value is altered internally
into the initscripts package, and in particular in the file:
/usr/lib/sysctl.d/00-system.conf. What I made in my special
initscripts package build, is just to comment these special "tweaking"
and leave the default values which are set before in the kernel.

Anyway I, NiCCo (and many others) found "empirically" that the
original OMV special tweaking don't give (when they work) much visible
performance improvement over the default values, but on the contrary
when they don't work the problems are clearly visible and the system
become unusable as many have experienced. So the conservative choice
is, if possible, to not to alter these values with tweaked ones.

Also none of the other major upstream distros, even the most
responsive ones, alter these values by default.

What other package might alter these values? The "tuned" package,
which might "dinamically" alter the internal values beyond to whatever
value you might have placed into 00-system.conf, and in fact my
suggestion to avoid interfering is to disable it (systemctl stop
tuned.service; systemctl disable tuned.service) or uninstall such
package too or to not install it by default.

What exactly are the values altered by the tweaking? Looking to old
00-system.conf, we see that changes were made in the previous OMV
initscripts (up to 9.53-1.6) to the following internal kernel
parameters:

vm.swappiness from 60 to 10
vm.vfs_cache_pressure from 100 to 50
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs from 500 to 1500 (sound required by powertop)

kernel.shmmax from 33554432 to 4294967295
kernel.shmall from 2097152 to 268435456

net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-{iptables,ip6tables ,arptables} -> set to 0
(to disable netfilter on bridges)

kernel.nmi_watchdog -> 0 (disable NMI watchdog)

I do not enter in merit of net.bridges, and kernel.nmi_watchdog, as
are not related, but in initscripts-9.53-1.7|1.8 I just switched back (or to be
precise, I've not let the package initscripts altering) the values of:

vm.swappiness -> so it goes back to default 60
vm.vfs_cache_pressure -> so it goes back to default 100
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs -> this is left altered as in original
initscripts to 1500.

in initscripts-9.53-1.8 I also switched back (commented in):

kernel.shmmax -> so it goes back 33554432
kernel.shmall -> so it goes back to 2097152

as these values are tipically changed for managing or improving the
performance of big databases (e.g. Oracle) and I don't see any reason
in a desktop environment to tweak them.

User avatar
joeghi
Nuovo utente
Nuovo utente
Posts: 5
Joined: 27 September 2014, 16:46
ROSA: -
OpenMandriva: 2010.2
Kernel: 3.15.10-nrjQL-realti
Desktop: KDE
country: Italy

Re: Alternative Initscripts configs for OpenMandriva 2014

Post by joeghi »

Version for Rosa 2014.1 for correcting the same problems, here:

http://abf-downloads.rosalinux.ru/ghibo ... x86_64.rpm

(sources in the same repository).

G.

User avatar
benbullard79
Utente junior
Utente junior
Posts: 73
Joined: 8 April 2012, 19:52
ROSA: None
OpenMandriva: 2014.2, Cooker
Kernel: 4.1.12-nrjQL
Desktop: KDE4,Plasma5
country: US
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Alternative "Initscripts" for OpenMandriva 2014.2 & ROSA

Post by benbullard79 »

joeghi thanks for the informative post.
Thanks,
Ben
aka: ben79

Post Reply