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Re: [PATCH] [request for inclusion] Realtime LSM

From:  Ingo Molnar <mingo-AT-elte.hu>
To:  Lee Revell <rlrevell-AT-joe-job.com>
Subject:  Re: [PATCH] [request for inclusion] Realtime LSM
Date:  Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:52:13 +0100
Cc:  Chris Wright <chrisw-AT-osdl.org>, Alan Cox <alan-AT-lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, Jack O'Quin <joq-AT-io.com>, Christoph Hellwig <hch-AT-infradead.org>, Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org>, Andrew Morton <akpm-AT-osdl.org>, Arjan van de Ven <arjanv-AT-redhat.com>
Archive-link:  Article, Thread


the RT-LSM thing is a bit dangerous because it doesnt really protect
against a runaway, buggy app. So i think the right way to approach this
problem is to not apply RT-LSM for the time being, but to provide an
'advanced latency needs' scheduling class that is _still_ safe even if
the task is runaway, but behaves with near-RT priorities if the task is
'nice' (i.e. doesnt use up large amount of CPU time.)

incidentally, there is such a scheduling class already: negative nice
levels. Please skip any preconceptions you might have about nice levels,
nice levels have been improved in 2.6.10, the timeslices are now given
out exponentially, giving nice -20 tasks far more weight and priority
than they used to have. (They are obviously still preemptable if they
keep looping burning CPU - but that we can consider a feature.) (Also,
in 2.6 the negative nice levels have a much more agressive interactivity
setting, allowing them to preempt everything lower-prio.)

so, could you try vanilla 2.6.10 (without LSM and without jackd running
with RT priorities), with jackd set to nice -20? Make sure the
jack-client process gets this priority too. Best to achieve this is to
renice a shell to -20 and start up everything from there - the nice
settings will be inherited. How does such an audio test compare to a
test done with jackd running at SCHED_FIFO with RT priority 1?

if this works out well then we could achieve something comparable to
RT-LSM, via nice levels alone.

	Ingo


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