Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I've been looking at the kernel source to check what this setting affects, and although I couldn't see the direct link between this value and the pages written, the comments and documentation says it does affect it (I'll just assume it is my limited comprehension of the code from seeing how it does), however this value also affects the number of pages that are read ahead of what is requested, which is really for performance on hard drives where seek time is an issue, so the fact reducing this value reduces the number of unnecessary extra reads from swap may improve performance (or it may be insignificant).

Another thing I noticed was that the kernel defaults this value to 3 (or 2 on systems with less than 16MB RAM) and there is a comment that setting it much higher than this causes other issues. While these other issues remain unspecified along with the exact value to trigger them, it may be that that values of 5 or 6 could trigger them.

In all, these changes have seemed to make my N900 more responsive and maybe after a couple of days use with these settings (except the tcp_timestamps since I don't think that is worth doing), I might tweak them one at a time to see which ones really have an effect, my first one will be to change the page_cluster to 3.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

i am not seeing this in fam. i have updated the catalogs. what's the package name?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

it's not in any repository

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

oh....thanks. will dpkg it then :)

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

@ droll
If you had read this thread then you would have realized that this is just deb packages provided on messages.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

wow, this has changed the responsiveness of the device quite significantly. prior to this i was only running the swappiness setting and that already had a big impact.

thank you for collating these settings into a single package.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Ö.ö <--- My first impression after I installed that script and started up MicroB and then a message coming in... Man, first time the GUI was faster than me Ö.ö

That package really did improve the speed of the device pretty bad-***. Browsing is now geourgous! Engadget scrolls now like a charm and also having it loaded in the background and switching to it was like half a second :o Amazing
Really, thanks for that. I really needed that. OC'ing becoming more and more obsolete ^^

Cheers,

mikki-kun

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

How long do you guys suggest i wait for the early adopters to start reporting issues before i join in?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

i don't think that there are issues.
and even if something comes,you can simply deinstall the package via HAM

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

no risks of data corruption, reduction of lifetime of components etc?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I empirically suggest some care when you shut down your n900. Do a sync in xterm before, so you're sure that everything gets written properly on the flash memory. Then shutoff by the button or give a sudo halt command. Maybe I'm too prudent, but in the last few weeks I've had to reflash too many times (and I wasn't running swappolube yet).

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

any way to automate those precautions so it always happens regardless of how i shut down (i mean, other than when pulling the battery and alike), including sudo reboot ?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

This is all done automatically when turning the device off via the power button menu. In fact, "halt", "reboot", and "poweroff" will also sync your filesystems before doing their thing, unless you run them with "-n".

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Who knows? Nobody. What did you expect?

Remember to backup.


Always!

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

that is why i'm asking about how long i shuold wait for the early adopters to start reporting issues before i try it myself

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

you should make a backup and try it now.
if your device explodes you can make a reflash:)

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

It takes too long to reinstall and setup everything again, i wanna avoid reflashing as much as possible

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

If so then to maximize odds for keeping your device in shape I suggest that:

- Do not in any means install stuff from devel or testing repositories
- Do not install random packages from from "cool" webpages that show you "amazing" new software
- Do not install packages from TMO message attachements

Capiche?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

The answer is never. We could all be fine and you could have an issue with it.

For example, I was priding myself on never reflashing since December (OTA), with -devel activated and several things installed, like OC kernel.

Then I installed that package that allows you to start what you want on camera slide (can't remember the name). After that, reboot and the phone started, loaded up until the desktop and, when it came time to populate desktop with widgets, reboot.

Had to reflash. I'm pretty sure it's wasn't the package, but the straw that broke the camel's back. Actually, I suspect the currency widget, it's been behaving strangely. Nonetheless, the camera launcher is fine, everyone uses it.

How long before I joined in? Didn't matter.

Point is, you never know, you might as well join in. I'd go for backup menu if you are a reflash hater (aren't we all).

On a brighter note, all this changes are some settings. I find the likelihood of flash-worthy issues to be close to nil.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I am sorry to ask the obvious, but have you tried sacrificing a black goat and drawing "666" with its blood across your N900's screen? I am pretty sure it won't fix any packages but may fix the reboot loop. =)

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I was all out of black goats. I only have a white one, but that's an iGoat. Doesn't work on Nokia. Not sure it's an ARM goat, either.

Besides, if I want to keep my warranty, it has to be an Original Nokia Accessory, the GT-003. Have you seen the prices on those?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

wow.. it really boosted my n900!!

Thanks

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

If someone has extra time, would be nice to have URI's for every setting what it really is (to Linux kernel docs for example). Some of them have surely been explained here and there on these posts, but gather them all to one single post or preferrably to this starting post of this thread.

Or a wiki page would be nice for this package and for the settings it use.

[1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7539

(Edit: I did as an example for laptop_mode.)

(Edit2: Oh, didn't try this link in the first post. Maybe they are all there already. And seems also now underneath an another link. But links to actual Linux kernel docs are missing in both.)

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Not quite support (And maybe mentioned in here already - apologies if it is)

But a good little description of most of the above, none the less - http://www.freemaemohelp.com/home/-/ablog/entryId/36094

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

echo "30" > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
Tendency to swap. 0 means swap as a last resort, 100 is swap as soon as possible.

echo "0" > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster
page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in a single attempt. The swap I/O size.

echo "1" > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
Laptop mode is used to minimize the time that the hard disk needs to be spun up, to conserve battery power on laptops.

echo "1" > /proc/sys/vm/oom_kill_allocating_task

When out of memory, the OS will kill a task to revive. When 0, kills the largest task. When 1, it kills the task that requested the memory.

echo "0" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs
echo "0" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

The VM subsystem, in the Linux kernel, buffers writes to files that applications perform for a period of time. This caching allows the kernel to group consecutive writes into one big write, and to generally optimize the disk IO to be the most efficient. The kernel, by default, will start writing out data to disk after 5 seconds, so, if a power failure or kernel crash happens, at most, 5 seconds of data would be lost.

echo "60" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio

Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out dirty data.

echo "95" > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio

Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty data.

echo "0" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_no_metrics_save

These settings disable some of the features of TCP as defined by the RFC.

Not the best links out there, but it's a first effort.

ETA: Wow, it looked better in preview mode :P

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

which settings get reset at boot and which settings i can change without fighting with the swappo?

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Some comments:



More precisely - swapout. With 100 the kernel swaps out anything but it doesn't erase it from memory and uses it if it is still in memory. The value 100 guarantee your a minimal time for your application load or swap in, for exam - in a middle of your video somebody calls you and kernel starts downloading phone application immediately.

As disadvantage, 100 forces a flash channel I/O high usage which decreases a performance of downloading because it services swapout each time. It also decreases battery time life because kernel does a lot of unnecessary work.

Quote:

echo "0" > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster

The value "0" provides you a wider I/O channel to download application from flash because kernel uses small blocks for swapping and can put an application load request faster. In over case it may increase your swapout time and wear eMMC much faster.

It forces a huge time delay (up to 10min) between file system writes. Usually it is OK for N900 but if you have some regular system halts, unexpected reboots etc then you are in danger of losing directory data --> loosing your user files (even old and unchanged) and forcing system problems too.

Actually, it is not good things because "laptop_mode" was designed for disks - it tries to group multiple writes in short time instead of spreading it, so, it is a good for disks spin down. But it has no sense for flash-based systems like N900 and introduces a serious danger of losing old files.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I'm Sorry, but I do not understand what is this application, you can explain?
Thanks

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

You know what they say about staying away from extras-devel unless you know what you're doing? That x1000 for .debs and scripts posted outside the repositories.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Thanks a lot, noticed an immediate speed increase.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

How do you remove this? RM a tuning script in /etc/event.d?

I've noticed a lag, like I have to wake it(N900) up and then it starts working.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

It may be effect of low swappiness.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I've been running the swappiness mod for a few weeks, don't think that was it.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

bit the bullet and installed new version, after v1 caused me to have to reflash

did a sync and halt... then a reboot. seems fine.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Just remove from application manager or from fapman; or use xterm as root: dpkg -r swappolube.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

just a single question before i try it cuz it looks great, does it work with stock kernel? or do i need to install the titans kernel

cheers

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

@arnoldux

It works fine with stock kernel.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

I'm confused, is laptop mode really a good idea when its optimised for HDD use not flash? I have read a few comments which seems to imply its probably a bad idea.

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

Hi,

Here is a simple GUI (created with PyQT) that creates the "tuning" file and copies it to the event.d folder.

The first row of checkboxes is to enable the setting. If unchecked it will not write anything for this option.
The second row if checked will give a "1" if not then it's a "0".

Pressing the "Create Settings" button overwrites the current tuning file with what exactly is chosen at that time in the GUI.

I have tested it but please test yourself too.

Attached is the deb you can install using the HAM and will create a blue icon in the applications for you to start it.

If you have simple features/requests I will try to implement but might take time - too busy at the moment.

Enjoy tuning your N900 but beware that these tunings are for brave people only - whiners stay away. :D

EDIT: An uninstall will not remove the tuning file on this version (will fix this later) in the meantime to remove completely open xterm and execute as root:

Re: [announce] swappolube to lubricate your gui
 

@Saturn: great work, mate!
Would you mind adding /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure, while we're in experimenting? Default value is 100. It's been researched for the N8x0 by brontide and co. :)

EDIT: on my machine the /etc/event.d/tuning script doesn't get created when I push the save button or when I close the python app.
Also, one useful thing would be having at least two pre-defined configs, i.e. the the default one and the Simon-kaze.daniel-alltimeswerout one, just to start.