Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Optimize your system for ultimate performance.

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basstrombone
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by basstrombone »

sunrat wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 1:36 am I'm sure the devs had great intentions with this but it seems to have stalled in August. They never fixed the massive error which claimed to install an RT kernel but actually did nothing. IIRC it also frequently pinged the internet to check for updates, not something you want happening while recording.
It definitely had potential but needs more work before being useful or safe.

First of all, sorry for the delay and Yes, we do! our problem (like everybody else) is time. We work on this project during our spare time. We teach in different and very far from each other's federal teaching institutions in Brazil. João teaches at the computer science school at IFPE and I at the UFPB's school of music (I teach trombone, coach major ensembles among many other activities). We are 350KM apart and we mostly speak via WhatsApp or Google Meet. This year we'll resume the project and follow up with everything. Thank you so much for your comments.
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by arifd »

I had a look at the github page. and in fairness I don't understand .deb format, but the project doesn't appear to be open source? I wouldn't want to give sudo access to a piece of code that I can't examine. Am I missing something?

In the last couple of weeks I've been working on a similar project (I wasn't aware of yours), basically, as I'm building my 'perfect' linux system, I'm documenting and automating everything.

I've split the work into components though, I.e one for upgrading the kernel, another for configuring the audio system, but as I'm into video also, compiling modules for the kernel to load virtual video devices (read your phone as a webcam) etc. And since the work has been split into components, there is a handy menu at the beginning with which the user can select which operations they want performed.

Don't know what to do now, because parallel work is wasteful, but I wouldn't know how to contribute to your project.
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by autostatic »

I would advise against installing the deb. It contains some fundamental issues, like setting max-user-freq for the real time clock while modern software doesn't use the RTC directly anymore, most if not all rely on the snd-hwtimer kernel module these days. It also overwrites your kernel config in /boot so that scripts like realtimeconfigquickscan think you're running a real-time kernel while you're not. It does the same for setting the frequency of the timer interrupt. This is purely cosmetic, it doesn't change the behaviour of your system in any way as the config in /boot isn't read by startup. These kernel settings can only be set by building your own kernel or installing a kernel that has these adjustments. It also sets fs.inotify.max_user_watches which is unrelated to audio work, see also https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system ... sysctlconf
Then there's the fact that only a deb is offered and not the source itself. You can look into the deb though by downloading it and opening it with an archive manager.
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autostatic
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by autostatic »

khz wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2020 1:59 pm This discussion is very interesting: .Deb File to optimize Linux Mint to use in ProAudio - https://discourse.ardour.org/t/deb-file ... dio/104368.
<Edit>
[...] https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration.
I wrote most of the content on this page in 2006/7 and sadly most of it is out of date and has since been frankensteined by various wiki editors. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
Tried my best to keep the system configuration wiki as updated as possible but when people started to add information that was already in there it got a bit messy, that's true. Guess it needs a good cleanup.
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by raboof »

arifd wrote: Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:53 pm I had a look at the github page. and in fairness I don't understand .deb format, but the project doesn't appear to be open source? I wouldn't want to give sudo access to a piece of code that I can't examine. Am I missing something?
It's indeed not very convenient. To inspect the .deb you can

Code: Select all

ar x music-daw.0.1.0.deb
and then

Code: Select all

tar xvf control.tar.xz; tar xvf data.tar.xz
. It's mostly bash scripts, so possible to examine.
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by raboof »

autostatic wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:03 am I would advise against installing the deb. It contains some fundamental issues, like setting max-user-freq for the real time clock while modern software doesn't use the RTC directly anymore, most if not all rely on the snd-hwtimer kernel module these days.
While indeed probably not so relevant anymore today, do you think it would hurt?
autostatic wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:03 am It also overwrites your kernel config in /boot so that scripts like realtimeconfigquickscan think you're running a real-time kernel while you're not. It does the same for setting the frequency of the timer interrupt. This is purely cosmetic, it doesn't change the behaviour of your system in any way as the config in /boot isn't read by startup. These kernel settings can only be set by building your own kernel or installing a kernel that has these adjustments.
Ouch, that indeed seems like a rather serious/misleading bug... I wish more distro's would enable creating /proc/config.gz, since that makes is harder to fool yourself like this :)
autostatic wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:03 am It also sets fs.inotify.max_user_watches which is unrelated to audio work, see also https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system ... sysctlconf
I suspect the history here is applications like DAWs or samplers trying to watch many files, and when not enough watchers are available falling back to polling (which would cause disk I/O which might cause jitter). While indeed perhaps no longer so crucial today, a bit more memory usage seems like a relatively cheap trade-off?

I created https://github.com/raboof/realtimeconfigquickscan to codify the 'current collective wisdom' into something executable (without messing with your system ;) ). It also still checks for max_user_watches (https://github.com/raboof/realtimeconfi ... esCheck.pm). I would definitely welcome PR's improving this - in this case, perhaps simply removing this check.
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by autostatic »

raboof wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:16 amWhile indeed probably not so relevant anymore today, do you think it would hurt?
I wouldn't really know as I'm not sure how RTC and snd-hwtimer are related. I don't think it will hurt but I do know it's not necessary anymore.
raboof wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:16 amI suspect the history here is applications like DAWs or samplers trying to watch many files, and when not enough watchers are available falling back to polling (which would cause disk I/O which might cause jitter). While indeed perhaps no longer so crucial today, a bit more memory usage seems like a relatively cheap trade-off?
That makes perfectly sense of course, thanks for pointing that out. And indeed, increasing the max_user_watches value shouldn't cost that much memory.
raboof wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:16 amI created https://github.com/raboof/realtimeconfigquickscan to codify the 'current collective wisdom' into something executable (without messing with your system ;) ). It also still checks for max_user_watches (https://github.com/raboof/realtimeconfi ... esCheck.pm). I would definitely welcome PR's improving this - in this case, perhaps simply removing this check.
Still a great tool @raboof, the go-to tool to check your system. I'd definitely encourage everyone to look into improving it (inclusing myself)!
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Re: Please testers needed: Debian Package to Optmize Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian Based OSs

Post by sunrat »

I have corresponded with the writers of this script and they have accepted that the kernel config issue is wrong and that it also shouldn't be checking updates every hour. They are very busy educators and don't really have much time for this.
I don't actually believe a .deb file is a suitable vehicle for such wide-ranging setup changes. Different systems and different users will have different requirements.

I actually just tried to set up a new Debian Bullseye production system (multiboot with a very functional Buster system) and ran the QuickScan script, having a few thoughts about it along the way. The max_user_watches is at worst harmless if it's not useful IMO.
One thing I have been considering a lot lately is swappiness having read several threads about it recently. Apparently it does not directly affect the tendency to swap out from memory as generally believed, but specifies the ratio of anonymous pages to file cache which are swapped.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... by-default
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=231265
This new system has 3 hours uptime now (Ardour, Carla, QJackCtl, Firefox, DeadBeef +) with zero swap used (16GB RAM) so I will leave it at default 60 for science. :wink: Changing it to 10 wouldn't hurt though, just means it will favour swapping anonymous pages over file cache if it ever gets to swap, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
Now to sort out why pulseaudio jack sink and jalv don't work like they do in the old Buster system. :| :?
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