SCHED_4BSD in RELENG_7 disturbs workflow

[Kris Kennaway]

[LoN]Kamikaze wrote:
> I know that RELENG_7 is not considered very near-release, but I thought I'd
> give my 2¢ in the hope that I might have a little influence on the scheduler
> development to my benefit.
> 
> The switch from RELENG_6 to RELENG_7 went relatively smooth and apart from ipw
> causing panics. However there is one thing that's disturbing and this is the
> scheduler. I only have single core machines, so whatever I say only applies to
> those. If you think single-core machines are no longer important, feel free to
> ignore this. In deed, just ignore me however much you like.
> 
>>From my perspective scheduling on RELENG_6 was way better. Even on a full
> workload like a portupgrade the focused application (both in X and on the
> console) always received enough cycles to run smoothly and applications that
> ran in background like audio players also kept on running fine.
> 
> Quite the contrary on RELENG_7. During a portupgrade or even worse 'pkgdb -L'
> (recovering lost dependencies) audio players (both graphical and mplayer)
> scatter, either because they don't get the hard-disk or CPU-cycles (which one,
> I don't know) and the focused application also often hangs. It just looks like
> occasionally (under load) everything freezes for a second and then goes on
> relatively normal.
> 
> I've got the impression that things compile a little faster (that might be my
> imagination, though), but I'd rather have a smooth working experience.
> 
> This is just my view of the situation and I suppose it is only one of many. I
> bid you be merciful with us single-core people, who cannot afford a slick
> multi-core machine, because we worry how to pay for our food at the end of the
> month.

Not to say that any problems that might have developed with SCHED_4BSD 
should not be fixed, but you should give SCHED_ULE a try since it brings 
benefits even for single CPU systems (e.g. better interactive response).

Kris