ULE Scheduler and overall performance on 6.x - Wow

[Duane Whitty]

Jonathan Horne wrote:
> i remember when i first started using freebsd about 2 months ago, the first 
> kernel i built, i did the ULE (at some articles recommendataion).  but, ive 
> not done it since.  i guess i have been noticing a bit of lag on my system 
> (amd 1800mhz 512rdram, u160 scsi raid0), but nothing unacceptable.
>
> however, since i didnt have a problem with my first kernel that i did, and 
> your positive response, i decided to go ahead and change out the specified 
> scheduler in my kernconf, and let 'er rip.
>
> is your system a desktop?  were your prevously running the same desktop 
> configuration on the same box, with the 4BSD?  is the ULE scheduler suited 
> for a server setup as well (my server is also SMP), or is this something that 
> should be kept to a desktop?
>
> thanks,
> jonathan horne
>
>   
My system is a "desktop" and yes I was previously using the 4BSD 
scheduler.  As for
whether it is suited for a server environment I would say that depends.  
>From what
I understand it is an experimental scheduler meant to bring better 
performance
to SMP machines but that UP machines may also show some improvement.
If I was using this box as a server for mission critical applications
there are a whole bunch of things I am doing now that I would not be doing.

Before I would use any relatively new configuration on a production 
server I would
have to do some reliability testing and benchmarking on a test machine 
that I had
configured to test a particular harware/application mix.  I would also 
be reading what
other people had to say and I would first choose to use something that 
was known to
generally work and for which issues were generally know and mostly 
understood.  Also,
go where the support is.  :)

This is basically a test box and a learning platform. There are way too 
many applications
loaded on this machine and they are far too varied in nature for me to 
single out one aspect
of my configuration and say whether or not it is suitable in a server 
configuration.  In
addition I wouldn't be able to say whether ULE is suitable for a server 
after testing it
on hardware that is definitely not suitable as a server, in my opinion.

I am willing to say that for desktop use the ULE scheduler --seems-- to 
work great.  But
do keep in mind Mr. Kennaway's comments per this thread.  Of course the 
4BSD scheduler
works great so I wouldn't switch unless I had a reason to.

--Duane
> On Sunday 07 May 2006 04:43, Duane Whitty wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I decided to give the ULE scheduler a try  a while ago (April 28).
>> when I last built 6-STABLE
>>
>> Anyhow it seems great.  I'm running a 2.4GHz Celeron with
>> 512MB RAM and two 40GB, PATA disks.  Right now I'm running
>> both a GNOME and a KDE session, I've got Thunderbird and
>> Evolution open, Firefox is running and running well, and I'm
>> updating the my local copy of the FreeBSD repository.  Oh yeah,
>> I'm also running a DNS server, a Sendmail server, and SAMBA
>> I can't believe how responsive everything is on this low-end machine
>> I'm running.    Wow!  (And this with debugging turned on but no WITNESS
>> or INVARIANTS turned on)
>>
>> Well time to rebuild the sources  :)
>>
>> dwpc@ /home/duane>uname -a
>> FreeBSD dwpc.dwlabs.ca 6.1-RC FreeBSD 6.1-RC #0: Fri Apr 28 18:41:15 ADT
>> 2006     duane at dwpc.dwlabs.ca:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/DWPC-KERNEL  i386
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Duane Whitty
>>     
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