Low CPU usage kernel?

[KIOS]

Is there a way to create a kernel that uses less CPU power then most other kernels? Im looking to run servers with no higher then 500FPS so I want to save as much resources as possible since Im not going to be running super high-end servers.

Any input is appreciated. Thank you!

[Peter_Pan123]

what a question? reduce tickrate, reduce maxrate, reduce fps_max, reduce all to get less CPU usage :-D
if you want to get low cpu usage the problem could be to get bad fps/playing results

[BehaartesEtwas]

there is no such thing as a kernel reducing cpu power required by srcds/hlds. how should that work? indeed there are kernels that tend to show a different cpu load of srcds/hlds under same condition (nb. of players, plugins etc.). but the kernel cannot measure the real cpu load of a srcds/hlds server. it's simply impossible, because it samples the cpu usage (which is in reality either 0 or 1 and switching fast between those states, with a frequency of at least the server fps) not often enough. also on some kernels the cpu load measurement will be correlated with the switching between running and sleeping of the server, so then it's complete nonsense...

but there is one thing you should keep in mind: low latency usually requires high overhead. so if you are using RT or CK patches to have more stable fps your system will require a bit more time (for context switching etc.). if you plan to run as many servers on one machine as possible, use a vanilla kernel with 100 HZ, dynamic ticks and high resolution timer but without any preemption. that should have (in theory) the lowest overhead. but as I said there is no way of directly proving this wrong or true. simply try it out and do not look at the cpu usage. (better look at the fps and at the "load average" printed out by the uptime command)

[Peter_Pan123]

i heard that normally the lib does less cpu load? he could try it ... but kernel ... nothing.

[lol554]

(03-31-2010, 05:55 PM)Peter_Pan123 Wrote:  i heard that normally the lib does less cpu load? he could try it ... but kernel ... nothing.

Well i dont really think that you can make srcds have lower cpu usage by using another kernel, but you can optimize the kernel so it will have less cpu usage on the whole system

[pc349bds]

I think that Ubuntu 9.10 Server has done a nice job of this. The only thing you need on your Ubuntu server is OpenSSH. You cant get much less then one program.

If you want to see what is running just run " top " it gives you list of all running programs. and the kill command can stop them. And ctrl c or q to get out of top. but as to the differences in the kernels i have no clue as to if one is better for game server than another. That would be something interesting to look in to.

[Terrorkarotte]

First of all the kill command isnt the best way to stop a process. Most of the Deamons are stopped and started with /etc/init.d/deamonname start|stop|restart . So use these scripts.
And I guess there is more you want to run. ftpserver and a firewall for example. if you are using RAID often mdadm is used too.
We had already a discussion about stripping the deamons of debian which lead to the result that stripping it down does no harm but also wont get you a increased performance.
Also lots of Users using Linux for gameservers cause they can fit the kernel to their hardware and gameservers. Thats why they wont use the standart kernel.

A better way to see all processes is using "ps faux". That way you can see all processes and their childs.

[BehaartesEtwas]

most background processes are there for a reason and take very little resources. I would recommend strongly against killing any processes you do not know. even a full web server with php and mysql doesn't have any measurable impact on the performance of srcds/hlds (unless you are hosting really high traffic web pages with a lot of sql requests. even the FPS meter does *not* have an impact since my root has enough RAM!).

also most optimizations in the kernel will lead only to very minimal effects, if any. as I wrote only some very specific settings may have a significant influence. namely those settings that affect the scheduler (i.e. preemption etc.).