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12-30-2008, 12:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2008, 12:42 PM by Zentriple.)
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I updated the how to in some aspects, I hope it works now better on more systems...
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Hello,
i had just read these information. But i had just right now a lot of questions...
1.) Its a hrtimer important for a RT Kernel or could i disable it?
2.) Its the 2.6.26-rt11 or the newest i think rt13 stable ? or is 2.6.24-rt26 better?
3.) Is the modification with "chrt" very important ? i tried it with no more FPS or better results ? Its normal to get under "top" a prio number og "-99"? I thought the prio is from 1 up to 99?
4.) Its a Real Time Kernel for gameserver really important ? i heart is only a ghost effect :-)
5.) Where can i perhaps modify the RT options > i heart i could do that at the timer? But how?
6.) Does these changes make sense for HL1 and HL2 not only one game?
7.) I know that older kernel (<2.6.23) produce less load, should i use them?
8.) Which chipset do you use for 1000 FPS HL2? I use a XEON 3350 with ICH9/10 chipset. I think the most CPU of Intel use the ICH9/10 and my server should do the same FPS, but me gets only 990-995 :-(
9.) I got for HL1 also under load FPS drops, some an idea?
10.) Which timer is the best? hpet? tsc? acpi_pm?
questions about questions....
best reguards
Peter
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01-22-2009, 09:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2009, 10:26 PM by BehaartesEtwas.)
I think most of the questions are already answered in the howto itself. Everything I wrote there is important in my experience. That does not mean that it will be important in all environments, or that there aren't other important things... Also there might be other ways to achieve the same results, of course.
to your questions:
1) it is important, hrtimers are more precise. you might even try setting the kernel HZ to 100 (instead of 1000), see the "playing around" part of the howto
2) in my experience the newer kernels work better
3) it is important to make full use of the features of the RT patches
4) try a vanilla kernel and compare :-)
5) what RT options do you mean?
6) as the howto says, it is for both, but not at the same time (I had huge problems running hlds and srcds at the same root!)
7) load is not important, it is just not well defined for the needs of a game server.
8) I am using an E8200 on an ICH7, but I have successfully tested the howto on an AMD system once (I don't remember the specs). EDIT: 990 are as good as 1000 fps. You won't get better easily (with srcds).
9) did you do everything as in the howto? did you try sys_ticrate 2500 and -pingboost 3?
10) hpet or acpi_pm can be better, but often there is no difference
I hope this helped...
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Hello,
thanks a lot for the answers !
Ok, i tested the 100 HZ version with 2.6.24. But the FPS on the HL1 Engine drops very often thats no good choice. I used the normal configuration, should i use tickless ? 64 bit ? and lenny ? I heart this could be the best combination fr tickless ?
Someone told me that the newer kernel had less deadlocks is that right ?
I tested the chrt function, but i have under top > "-99" with an minus > i thought ist should be 1-99 in plus ?
I know that the RT or hrtimer does less latency over the processes. But is that really important for gameserver ?
I hearded about options for RT Kernel. You can modify then in the kernel code ?
What do you mean, not both at the same time ? I think thats important what are your experience ?
My gameserves use only pb3 and sys_tic 2000.
best reguards
Peter
Thanks !
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Peter_Pan123 Wrote:Ok, i tested the 100 HZ version with 2.6.24. But the FPS on the HL1 Engine drops very often thats no good choice. I used the normal configuration, should i use tickless ? 64 bit ? and lenny ? I heart this could be the best combination fr tickless ?
my howto is for 64 bit. I used debian edge (now gentoo), but I think this does not really matter...
Quote:Someone told me that the newer kernel had less deadlocks is that right ?
the newer vanillas are getting better w/ respect to the preemption and deadlocks etc. RT has a full preemption and thus also deadlocks are preempted (afaik), so the impact should not be as big as for vanilla. But it will get better with newer versions, I am very sure...
Quote:I tested the chrt function, but i have under top > "-99" with an minus > i thought ist should be 1-99 in plus ?
yes, top shows values from -1 to -100 (while -100 is displayed as "RT"), and chrt expects 0 to 99. RT in top is 99 in chrt...
I know that the RT or hrtimer does less latency over the processes. But is that really important for gameserver ?
Quote:I hearded about options for RT Kernel. You can modify then in the kernel code ?
what kind of options? there are some options in the kernel config ("Preemption Mode" etc.). I would not recommend modifying the kernel code unless you really know what you are doing. but if you knew that you would not ask
Quote:What do you mean, not both at the same time ? I think thats important what are your experience ?
when I tried running on hlds on the same root where already three srcds were running, all srcds got really laggy. you can try it, maybe it's better on your system, but you have been warned ;-)
Quote:My gameserves use only pb3 and sys_tic 2000.
that should be fine.
can you post a measurement with the fps-meter? some rare drops (around 1%) are quite normal, you should not be concerned about them...
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thanks again, i will do that tonight.
My big problem is hlds, srcds is ok so far ...but i will show you some pics.
Would you recommend normally 64 bit oder 32 bit ? I got problems with 2.6.24 or 2.6.26 kernel. The hlds drops a lot from 1000 to 500. The srcds drops from 930 to 500, normally with 32 bit o got 995 FPS what do i wrong ?
I will try the new things (Variations) in the howto that i saw today. Is that right that i create a program which produce 100% CPU load to block one CPU that the system dont switch between the CPUs (because one is overloaded) and create no more FPS drops? Normally it could be in a 4 cores system, one process switches between the CPUs and between switching (perhaps) could be drop the FPS ??
Sorry i hope you will understand these idea....
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01-22-2009, 11:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2009, 11:12 PM by BehaartesEtwas.)
Is your hrtimer running with RT priority? from top:
Code:
12 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 35:00.54 sirq-hrtimer/0
24 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 54:21.55 sirq-hrtimer/1
You should have as many hrtimers as cpu cores, all running with RT priority.
PS: I recommend what I wrote in the HOWTO, so stop asking what I would recommend ;-)
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Ok, but my question was: "why do you do that"? Why do you recommand that? What is the reason? :-)
Do you produce 100% load on one CPU? Sorry for the question, i will test it tonight, but at the moment i cant.
thanks
Peter
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Peter_Pan123 Wrote:Ok, but my question was: "why do you do that"? Why do you recommand that? What is the reason? :-)
experience
of course it was not all try and error. I used what I knew about real time systems from those days I ran audio recording software on a slow PC.
Quote:Do you produce 100% load on one CPU? Sorry for the question, i will test it tonight, but at the moment i cant.
you mean with the "idler"? not anymore, because I am running another system, not that one described in the howto... but if I would run it, I would run the idler as well...
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but i dont understand > if the idler does 100% CPU load > the whole System ist busy and works the whole day. I think it produced a high voltage and for same gameserver providers a lot of money -.-
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and what? ;-)
in modern cpus, 100% cpu load is not equal 100% cpu load ;-) the idler essentially does nothing, so the cpu won't go to full power...
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mhhh
i used the howto und got segmentation fault :-(
now if i want to start a gameserver a command said seg fault.
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Code:
1649 gs260 -99 0 71524 59m 6248 S 3 0.7 0:34.65 hlds_i686
18 root -51 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 sirq-timer/1
32 root -51 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.29 sirq-net-rx/2
1 root 20 0 1940 636 540 S 0 0.0 0:00.33 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 posix_cpu_timer
I that ok ?
Now i have a lot of drops ? between 1000 and 900.
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