2009/10/18 P.V.Anthony <[email protected]> > Hi, > > Was going to compile the latest 2.6 kernel and noticed that I do not know > what all the options mean. Especially the "General Setup" and "Processor > Type and Features". > > Is there some detail guide explaining the options, about the meaning and > implications of these options for an Intel Xeon multi-core cpu? > > Any web links or books? > > P.V.Anthony >
You could press "?" on each option and get a rough summary with menuconfig. The Linux Kernel in a Nutshell is a good book, and there's an online version at: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/linux_kernel/kernel_configuration/ But that one is mostly a technical guide, not necessarily what you're looking for. You could give up on finding up-to-date "tutorials", especially with the massive progress there has been over the years. I remember when .19 rolled out, when pata deprecated ide, I had to dig through and read the changelogs to see where the options had moved to. If you're building for the desktop or workstation, there aren't many "tunables". Selecting the processor type can yield a slightly better performance from the optimisation, but not so much as you go down the scale. Removing options and modules can reduce the kernel size, but that doesn't make much difference today as it did in 1995. Coupled with SMP, Dynticks (the defaults basically), you're good to go. Take a look at the staging drivers for new and testing development stuff; there may just be salvation for hardware that didn't work before. As for the building, you can take a look at buildscripts like http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kernel26rt/kernel26rt/PKGBUILD and adapt it to your needs (look inside the build function). For example, this one patches the kernel for realtime (hard) preemption which basically is almost anti-scheduler, meant for embedded and industrial applications as well as audio. Using the Deadline I/O sched can improve the performance under certain workloads against CFQ. You may also want to check out BFS: http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/bfs/ Though some claim it to be "bloat", I personally don't care because the response I'm getting is simply awesome to say the least. It's not something hypothetical, you can actually notice the difference especially for multimedia (playing videos, fullscreen flash HD, running a multitude of processes yet not facing any kind of stutter anywhere, etc.). CFS fails in comparison.
_______________________________________________ LUGS Mailing list - [email protected] List FAQ: http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq Info page: http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet To unsubscribe send an empty email to: [email protected]
