# 2.6.4-ck2 is out !

## gringo

http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/3/26/110

staircase included!

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## ewan.paton

has anyone tested staircase yet, am i right in thinking its anouther disk access shedular or is it for the cpu

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## Jefklak

Nice nice!

I'm going to use this one I think...  :Smile: 

I'm trying to learn how that patch is built but I still don't get where the "-ck2" thing comes from. I mean, when using "uname -a" it'll say something like "Linux 2.6.4-ck2" > that HAS to be somewhere included in the patch but I have no clue where... Anyone? 

More details

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## Epyon

Look at the Makefile. Specifically the EXTRAVERSION line.

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## gringo

I patched rc2_mm2 with Con´s available patch and it runs fairly stable. 

Had no problems with it so far.

*EDIT* New Reiser4 snapshot out too !

http://www.namesys.com/snapshots/2004.03.26/

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## Cerement

Okay, anyone having a problem with this one?

Starts booting, makes it up to:

* ALSA Detected...

* Restoring Mixer Levels    [ ok ]

and then just hangs ... never gets around to * Starting USB and PCI hotplugging

2.6.4-ck1 worked fine and 2.6.5-rc2-aa1 to -aa3 worked fine ...

feh

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## Jefklak

It could be udev & hotplug.

I'm trying them out right now ill let you know something.

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## gringo

I´m using udev stuff too and no troubles so far. 

No idea what it could be...

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## Jefklak

 *gringo wrote:*   

> I´m using udev stuff too and no troubles so far. 
> 
> No idea what it could be...

 

Same here, works.

2.6.4-mm1 doesn't...

(I applied some custom patches but it's generally yust -ck2)

How do you use the staircase? Or is it set default as scheduler?

Something like elevator=stair or what?

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## darkless

Staircase is the name of Con's scheduler policies, whereas as (anticipatory) or cfq (complete fair queue) are the names of the scheduler itself.

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## bssteph

I guess that is true... but not entirely a statement to solve the problem of confusion.

Staircase is a scheduler policy, yes. But it is for _processes_, not _disks_ (as the above post could be read to say). Quote Con:

 *Quote:*   

> Staircase scheduler? 
> 
> This is a complete rewrite of the scheduler policy for normal tasks built on top of the O(1) scheduler. The aim was to make a scheduler that is interactive and responsive by design instead of modifying an existing design to make it interactive. 2.6.4-ck2 contains the first public release of this patch and so far has proven stable. 

 

O(1) is the process scheduler. as and cfq are disk schedulers.

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## didl

 *Cerement wrote:*   

> Okay, anyone having a problem with this one?
> 
> Starts booting, makes it up to:
> 
> * ALSA Detected...
> ...

 

Same here. However, hitting ^C a couple of times actually makes it 

boot eventually. Problem seems to be in /sbin/rc, but I haven't

figured out what exactly causes it. The kernel itself runs fine.

It seems that the staircase patches cause this problem and after

backing them out, my system boots just fine.

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## darkless

You are right, I should've made myself clearer to avoid confusion. Thanks for elaborating.

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## gringo

Thanks for explain it! I was quite confused about this too...

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## Jefklak

bssepth, so I can use "elevator=cfq" AND the staircase I(O)? No boot options or so needed for the first one? I also wonder wich patch those anticipatory or cfq shedulers are, or in wich kernel they are.

Let's say I'm using the -ck2 sources. (Vanilla patched). How can I use anticipatory then? Is there a patch or is it standard? And cfq? That would really clear things up for me  :Smile:  Thanks!

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## scaba

 *Quote:*   

> How is the cfq scheduler set? 
> 
> The cfq scheduler is enabled by default in -ck. If you do not wish to use the cfq I/O scheduler you will not benefit from the I/O priorities, but you can set it with the bootparam "elevator=as" or deadline.

 

http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

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## bssteph

 *Jefklak wrote:*   

> bssepth, so I can use "elevator=cfq" AND the staircase I(O)? No boot options or so needed for the first one? I also wonder wich patch those anticipatory or cfq shedulers are, or in wich kernel they are.
> 
> Let's say I'm using the -ck2 sources. (Vanilla patched). How can I use anticipatory then? Is there a patch or is it standard? And cfq? That would really clear things up for me :) Thanks!

 

The kernel can have multiple disk schedulers compiled and ready for use at once. Examples are cfq, as, and deadline. These are selected with the elevator=x option at boot time.

as and deadline are standard right now and are in the vanilla kernel. as is the default. -ck2 adds cfq.

The kernel can only have one process scheduler under the current model. There is no way to switch them (other than get a different kernel) and therefore no need to choose what you want to use. Examples are:

O(1) - vanilla 2.6, -mm (mm includes some fixes that eventually make it to vanilla)

Nicksched - -love

O(1) + staircase - -ck

Hope this clears it up.

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## Jefklak

I yust found a "cfq-4.patch" file in the broken-out -mm dir on kernel.org. It's the cfq sheduler, I didn't know it's in -ck2, So i already have it  :Smile:  Well thanks that indeed clears some things up.

I also heard Con's staircase breaks Nick's sheduler in -mm, so you won't be able to use those 2 at once...

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## dizzogg

i think the staircase scheduler needs some more work, my system gets bogged down quite easily  w/ it, music skips in rhythmbox, muine, which never happened before, but hey, I guess we're the guinea pigs... maybe I'll try out the aa-kernels..

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## ed0n

I tested ck few days ago, and I realized that in my p4 1.6ghz 512 mb ram desktop is faster with love-sources.

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## Cerement

 *dizzogg wrote:*   

> i think the staircase scheduler needs some more work, my system gets bogged down quite easily  w/ it, music skips in rhythmbox, muine, which never happened before, but hey, I guess we're the guinea pigs... maybe I'll try out the aa-kernels..

 

Careful with the new -aa patchsets -- was getting all the symptoms of a slow memory leak with them, system ran great right after boot, but after a day, things all over the place started to gradually slow down, could watch each table cell being added when looking at the front page of forums ...

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## dizzogg

 *Cerement wrote:*   

>  *dizzogg wrote:*   i think the staircase scheduler needs some more work, my system gets bogged down quite easily  w/ it, music skips in rhythmbox, muine, which never happened before, but hey, I guess we're the guinea pigs... maybe I'll try out the aa-kernels.. 
> 
> Careful with the new -aa patchsets -- was getting all the symptoms of a slow memory leak with them, system ran great right after boot, but after a day, things all over the place started to gradually slow down, could watch each table cell being added when looking at the front page of forums ...

 

thanks for the warning....

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## TenPin

ck2 works fine here but I think it might be slightly worse that ck1 for responsive ness. Hard to judge though.

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## Corky

 *TenPin wrote:*   

> ck2 works fine here but I think it might be slightly worse that ck1 for responsive ness. Hard to judge though.

 

Been running smoothly for me too, I'm not sure about less responsive than ck1, from my limited benchmarks its running about the same.

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## Jefklak

ck2 runs twice as good as the mm or love sources...

Now patching 2.6.5 @ ck2  :Razz: 

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## snakattak3

I tried it, and was having big-time USB problems. In that all my devices wouldn't work. I had this same problem with 2.6.4-mm, so i'm guessing its a bug in 2.6.4 series. Switched back to 2.6.3-mm, and will wait till 2.6.5-mm is stable probably.

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## Corky

 *snakattak3 wrote:*   

> I tried it, and was having big-time USB problems. In that all my devices wouldn't work. I had this same problem with 2.6.4-mm, so i'm guessing its a bug in 2.6.4 series. Switched back to 2.6.3-mm, and will wait till 2.6.5-mm is stable probably.

 

This is almost the complete reverse for me, the ck sources have been the only ones which have enabled me to have all my usb devices running without problems.  It's a funny old kernel world  :Smile: 

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## sklettke

I'm not sure about responsiveness increases or decreases as compared to ck1, but programs sure load a lot faster for me with ck2.  And, I'm not sure why, but both the ck's feel faster than love.

Scott

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## scaba

why is it, that there's still no ebuild for 2.6.4-ck2 in portage?

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## pandaxiongmao

I noticed that kernel 2.6.4 vanilla from portage tree generated a "hunk failure" message, when I was trying to apply 2.6.4-ck2 patch, yet 2.6.4 vanilla that I downloaded from kernel.org didn't produce that kind of message.

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## Jefklak

 *sklettke wrote:*   

> I'm not sure about responsiveness increases or decreases as compared to ck1, but programs sure load a lot faster for me with ck2.  And, I'm not sure why, but both the ck's feel faster than love.
> 
> Scott

 

Indeed, same here.

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## sklettke

 *scaba wrote:*   

> why is it, that there's still no ebuild for 2.6.4-ck2 in portage?

 

What I did was to rename ck-sources-2.6.4-r1.ebuild to ck-sources-2.6.4-r2.ebuild and then do

```
ebuild ck-sources-2.6.4-r2.ebuild digest
```

Now, when I run emerge -av ck-sources-2.6.4-r2.ebuild it downloads and applies the latest patches.

However, if you do this in the regular portage directory, your work will be overwritten whenever you do an emerge sync.

Scott

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## scaba

that would've been a good idea. but i already dowloaded vanilla-sources and patched it myself. thanks for the advice, though. will do it that way next time.

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## Gentree

 *sklettke wrote:*   

>  *scaba wrote:*   why is it, that there's still no ebuild for 2.6.4-ck2 in portage? 
> 
> What I did was to rename ck-sources-2.6.4-r1.ebuild to ck-sources-2.6.4-r2.ebuild and then do
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Are you sure about this? It seems that this is simply conning portage into emerging r1 but calling it r2, I may be wrong , but I see nothing in renaming the rebuild that will not simply duplicate the source files in an incorrectly named *-r2 directory.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> However, if you do this in the regular portage directory, your work will be overwritten whenever you do an emerge sync.
> 
> Scott

 

To make it sync-safe put it in PORTAGE_OVERLAY, assuming of course that the manouvre is valid.

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## sklettke

 *Gentree wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Are you sure about this? It seems that this is simply conning portage into emerging r1 but calling it r2, I may be wrong , but I see nothing in renaming the rebuild that will not simply duplicate the source files in an incorrectly named *-r2 directory.

 

```
$ uname -r

2.6.4-ck2

```

If you check the ebuild you can see that the name of the file reflects what patch is downloaded.

```
SRC_URI="${KERNEL_URI} http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/2.6/${KV/-ck*/}/${KV}/patch-${KV}.bz2"
```

And, I noticed that it does actually download the ck2 patch.

But, the real reason I did it this way was that I was lazy....  :Wink: 

Scott

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## Gentree

OK , I stand corrected.

Seems like a valid and useful technique until someone thinks of getting a more recent ebuild into portage.

Like I said above if it's put in PORTAGE_OVERLAY  it should still be there after a sync.

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## Gentree

I installed ck2 yesterday and , great surprise , my usb scanner started working!

It had been locking up with love sources and 2.6.4 but works like a dream with ck2.

The downer is my sound has gone!

Both gnome-cd and xmms seem to go through the motions but you could hear a pin drop!

Both direct sound (audio cable to CD drive) and digital sound in xmms + PCM work perfectly with love2 and love4 and fail with ck2.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Gentree  :Cool: 

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