[WBEL-users] kernel 2.6.5 on WB 3.0?

[Bill Davidsen]

Terrence Martin wrote:
> Bill Davidsen wrote:
> 
>> Seth Bardash wrote:
>>
>>> Any suggestions on the packages that need to be upgraded or added
>>> to WB 3.0 to get it to support 2.6.5 would be helpful. 
>>
>>
>>
>> You need the modutils to load modules. The arjan ones are more 
>> convenient than doing the install of Rusty'd code yourself, if nothing 
>> else. Careful, there's a WBEL upgrade which overwrites them again.
>>
>> For the proc utils, you can use the RH ones or the Albert Callahan 
>> sourceforge version. I slightly prefer the AC/SF versions, both work 
>> and differ mainly in user presentation of data.
>>
>>>
>>> We are going to try to start where arjanv/2.6 has left off. Just
>>> installing 2.6.5 source and doing the make's doesn't come close.
>>> Way too many unresolved symbols and you need to install the
>>> filesystem drivers in the kernel to get them to come up properly.
>>
>>
>>
>> The main thing which seems to be missing in arjan and kernel.org 
>> versions is a forward port of the CPIE stuff for VPN. That's the only 
>> thing I don't find which I would really like, since I've used it a 
>> bit. Yes there are alternatives.
>>
>>>
>>> If there was something that did for error messages what rpm -q
>>> does packages that would be a big help but its not that easy....
>>>
>>> We have found that systems based on Fedora core 1 upgraded to the
>>> 2.6.5 kernel run the gigabit ethernet about 25 to 40 % faster than
>>> the standard 2.4.XX kernel with no other changes. 33-40 MB/sec
>>> versus 52 - 60 MB/sec - The only changes made were to install the
>>> source for 2.6.5, compile and run the new kernel (greatly
>>> sinplified of course). All hardware and BIOS setting were the
>>> same. The numbers shown above were for nfs transfers of iso images
>>> to and from our linux server.
>>
>>
>>
>> Were you using a "standard kerenl" as in kernel.org, or the enhanced 
>> one in WBEL? That had new threading as well.
>>
>>>
>>> If we could upgrade the WB 3.0 kernel to 2.6.5 with the correct
>>> additional rpm packages to get it to work correctly we expect to
>>> see a similar increase in net performance.
>>>
>>> Something to work on in my spare time ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> I strongly believe that this is a case of better tuning by default 
>> rather than some driver thing, but I could be wrong about that.
>>
> These numbers for gigabit networking similar to what we find. We tune 
> both 2.4 and 2.6 as much as possible for gigabit. We have realized a 
> significant (30%) speedup on gigabit networking using identical tunings 
> with 2.4 vs 2.6. In particular in our dual gigabit network card tests we 
> get upwards of 200MB/s.  For our testing we have used Fedora Core, but I 
> am moving to WBEL or Rocks Cluster 3.1+ (uses RHEL3 as a base) for our 
> cluster so will be attempting to deploy 2.6 on those systems.
> 
> What I have also found is that the IO is also around 20% better on 2.6.4 
> than on stock redhat kernels in Fedora when reading and writing to a 
> fiberchannel attached storage array.  I  attribute this to the IO 
> scheduler improvements in 2.6 not available in redhat 2.4 kernels.
> 
> There are also other features that are attractive, especially for 
> clusters. NFSv4, as well as support for PVFS2.

In my spare time I've been trying to build a 2.6.5 which will boot on 
and IBM 345. The stock RHEL (or WBEL "-9") kernel crashes every time I 
start the application, and I really need to get this application going. 
After I get a fix I'll do some benchmarks under normal load.

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me