Compiling options?

Compiling options?

[Robert L. Harris]

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Ok, I currently manage a site with a couple hundred machines ranging
from P2 through AMD-Durons.  The prevaling theory was to make a single
kernel compiled for a "pentium classic" and then load in drivers for
about everything under the sun.

Is there anything good written up on if this is the best way for our 4
person admin team to keep managing this or should the boxes be custom
tuned for specific groups of machines within reason?  "What does it buy
us" is one of the big questions as swapping out that many kernels and
testing 5-8 different varriants is a big buyin on time.

Robert


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Re: Compiling options?

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 01:03:34PM -0500, Robert L. Harris wrote:

 > Is there anything good written up on if this is the best way for our 4
 > person admin team to keep managing this or should the boxes be custom
 > tuned for specific groups of machines within reason?  "What does it buy
 > us" is one of the big questions as swapping out that many kernels and
 > testing 5-8 different varriants is a big buyin on time.

Depends largely on the workload. Compiling a kernel targetted at
Athlon/Duron will factor in the 3dnow memory copying code which speeds
up bulk copies quite a lot. If your workload doesn't involve that much
memory copying, you'll likely not notice that much of a difference
though.

		Dave

Re: Compiling options?

[Alan Cox]

On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 18:03, Robert L. Harris wrote:
> Ok, I currently manage a site with a couple hundred machines ranging
> from P2 through AMD-Durons.  The prevaling theory was to make a single
> kernel compiled for a "pentium classic" and then load in drivers for
> about everything under the sun.

If your boxes range from PII through to AMD duron build for 686, but the
basic theory is the same.

A 386 kernel really hurts later CPUs
A 486 kernel is generally fine
A 686 kernel speeds stuff up a little more

The only CPU that is really helped by a custom kernel is the rather rare
IDT winchip which is 10-30% faster with the right kernels

Re: Compiling options?

[Robert Love]

On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 14:47, Alan Cox wrote:

> If your boxes range from PII through to AMD duron build for 686, but the
> basic theory is the same.
> 
> A 386 kernel really hurts later CPUs
> A 486 kernel is generally fine
> A 686 kernel speeds stuff up a little more

Should add that a 586 kernel is horrid on 686 and Athlon machines - the
scheduling is worlds apart.  Use it only on true 586 machines.

If you need a common denominator, go with 486 as Alan pointed out.  In
your case 686 seems safe and sane, though.

	Robert Love