On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 02:14, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-06-22 at 17:58, Con Kolivas wrote:
> > On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 01:40, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2003-06-22 at 15:45, Con Kolivas wrote:
> > > > > Feel free to test it and comment. Things to look for - the dreaded
> > > > > audio skip under load, and X remaining interactive during sustained
> > > > > use under load.
> > >
> > > I must say this seems to be getting better, but I still prefer Mike's
> > > patches. With the latest sleep decay patch and 2.5.72-mm3, I can still
> > > easily starve XMMS audio for a long time (~5 seconds) on my 700Mhz
> > > Pentium III laptoņ (running RHL9 and KDE 3.1.2) simply by running
> > > "while true; do a=2; done" on a konsole window. Dragging a window fast
> > > enough also starves XMMS for ~5 seconds just until the scheduler
> > > adjusts the priorities.
> > >
> > > XMMS is running with an effective priority of 15 (that's what top
> > > says). "while true; do a=2; done" starts with a priority of 15 (which
> > > causes XMMS to stop playing sound), then it is detected as a CPU hog
> > > and every second its priority is increased by one. When its priority
> > > reaches 20, XMMS starts playing again.
> > >
> > > When I move windows around fast enough. the X server starts with a
> > > priority of 15, starving XMMS. If I keep moving windows around for a
> > > long time, X's priority starts increasing by one, until it reaches 20.
> > > At this moment, it stops disturbing XMMS audio playback.
> > >
> > > I've been playing with scheduler parameters, mainly by reducing
> > > MAX_SLEEP_AVG to (HZ) and STARVATION_LIMIT to (HZ). This seems to help
> > > a lot, although I can still make XMMS skip sound every once a bit.
> > > However, mplayer is a really hard one: I have been unable to make it
> > > skip sound yet.
> >
> > Yes Mike's patches are definitely better. My patches are designed for the
> > 2.4-ck patchset which has other workarounds that augment this patch;
> > however these workarounds are harder to stomach for mainstream kernels
> > (read nasty hacks). I thought I'd offer the not so nasty sleep_decay
> > patch in 2.5 form for perusal and comments since people are more willing
> > to test 2.5 patches.
>
> Well, it's nice to know.
> I'm willing to test nearly any 2.5 patch. So, I'll gladly test any other
> ideas or patches you (or others) might have.

ANY?

Ok well I guess I have to give away my secret then. This is the change that 
turns 2.5 into a desktop kernel. Note the very slight change to Ingo's addon 
;-)

Con