Compiling kernel for srcds on Xen

[pete123456]

Hello all,

I'm trying to compile a paravirtualised kernel for use with my Xen vps. The reason being for this is that I have strange tick rate drops on the vanilla kernel. I've monitored the server and it doesn't drop its fps at all however the ticks often drop from 67 to 64/65, for a few seconds and then back to 67.

Either way it isn't stable which is a problem.

I've tried running the server at fps_max 66/200/333, at all rates I have this problem but the fps itself does not drop.

So far I've been setting the process priority of srcds to -99, the memory usage is fine, little over 7%, and looking through top srcds doesn't take much CPU time either.

The bandwidth shouldn't be a problem as I can download test files at 45MB/s and the latency is good.

So onto the kernel, I'd like to recompile the kernel with preempt and to increase the timer frequency to 300Hz (may try with 1000Hz to see if it makes a difference) however I'm having problems actually compiling the kernel.

I've tried two methods, make-kpkg and make install, with varying success (both with the paravirtualised kernel options on). The times that the kernel did compile the VPS did not turn back on, and I can't really do anything about it because I do not have console access to see what went wrong.

Oh and I'm using Debian x64 6.0

I've emailed my supplier who say that custom kernels should run fine however they are unable to provide any support for them -.-

I'd be very grateful if you could help me here.

Many thanks,

Pete

[Mike]

Alright, first off cpu usage is not correct on Linux when running gameservers. Second, the drops are normal, if you don't get drops it'd be suspicious. Anyways, read up;
http://wiki.fragaholics.de/index.php/EN:Linux_Optimization_Guide
http://wiki.fragaholics.de/index.php/EN:Linux_Kernel_Compilation

Oh, and for your kernel compilation problems, do:

Code:

sudo apt-get install gcc make libncurses5-dev chrt zlib1g-dev patch

Oh and the last, when your VPS didnt boot back up it was probably because it failed to mount its filesystem, check out the "How to avoid the usage of an initial ramdisk" or something like that in the wiki things.

Cheers

[pete123456]

Hey Mike,

Cheers for those, I've been studying that wiki for the last week trust me

Those are great but I'm looking for advice on building a paravirtualised kernel so I can use it in Xen.

Regarding the CPU usage, I'm aware the usage reported by srcds is incorrect however the figure in top should correct?

Thanks,

Pete

[Mike]

When i was "noob" (and still are) on these forums i was told that neither was correct. Using the command "uptime" in the terminal should print the average load on your system. And i'm sorry, i don't know anything about using Xen virtualization technology. It's never recommended to run a gameserver on a vps due to the resources. Like it might be good for Apache and stuff, but when it comes to gameservers they need precision and alot of resources available (or atleast that they can use).

[BehaartesEtwas]

(07-30-2011, 04:01 AM)pete123456 Wrote:  Those are great but I'm looking for advice on building a paravirtualised kernel so I can use it in Xen.

the advice is quite simple: don't do it (if you plan to run game servers). it requires big effort to achieve a good quality, and most of the effort has do be done at the hypervisor level. and even if you get it all perfectly running, you will in the and reach only at most the same level as if you would run all stuff without virtualization directly on the machine.

unless of course you rented a virtual machine to host your game servers. than you can do virtually nothing. it's simply the wrong approach. either rent a root server or single game servers.