Get Better Linux Desktop Performance And More With pf-kernel

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="tux logo" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o-NgmbVc-rE/UZYfwlgjg8I/AAAAAAAAPSU/oUZ4Wk0Ss5M/s150/Tux.png" title="tux logo" /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://pf.natalenko.name/">pf-kernel</a> is a custom Linux Kernel that comes with some popular patches not merged into the mainline Kernel, such as:</b></div><a name='more'></a><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">-ck patchset with <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Fuck_Scheduler">BFS</a></b> CPU scheduler: Con Kolivas' ck1 patchset which includes the BFS scheduler that brings better desktop interactivity and responsiveness;</li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/">BFQ I/O scheduler</a></b> : using this patch, the disk should be virtually as responsive as if it was idle, no matter what the load is (this is available by default in Sabayon and CyanogenMod);</li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://tuxonice.net/features">TuxOnIce</a></b>: an alternative suspend / hibernate framework that uses image compression, supports any number of swap partitions and/or files, has the ability to cancel hibernating or restoring the image by pressing escape key and more;</li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://kerneldedup.org/en/projects/uksm/">UKSM</a></b>: Memory De-Duplication;</li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://github.com/stec-inc/EnhanceIO">EnhanceIO</a></b>: a driver based on EhanceIO SSD caching software derived from Facebook's open source Flashcache project that's useful for using SSDs as cache devices for traditional HDDs.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">As an example, below you can watch a video recorded by <a href="http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/">Paolo Valente</a>, who is behind BFQ, demoing the performance of the BFQ disk I/O scheduler on a hard disk:</div><br /><center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/J-e7LnJblm8" width="420"></iframe><br />(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=J-e7LnJblm8">direct video link</a>)</center><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: red;">Warning:</span> Some things such as graphics drivers may not be compatible with pf-kernel since it may be a lot newer than the Linux Kernel used by default on your Linux distribution so be careful and only install it if you know what you are doing.</b> Also, options (like <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/increased-performance-in-linux-with.html">Zram</a>) available in your Linux distribution Kernel may not be enabled in pf-kernel. I've tested this in Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) with and I didn't encounter any issues (Bumblebee works with proprietary Nvidia drivers, etc.) but this may not be the case for you since it depends on your hardware and Ubuntu version.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install pf-kernel in Ubuntu / Debian</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Download the latest pf-kernel version for Ubuntu / Debian  from <a href="http://repos.natalenko.name/ubuntu/pf/">HERE</a>.</b> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You'll need to download two files: <i>linux-image</i> and <i>linux-headers</i> which have the same version (e.g.: 3.9.2), for your architecture. For instance, on 64bit, you'll need "linux-image-3.9.2-pf_1_amd64.deb" and "linux-headers-3.9.2-pf_1_amd64.deb" (3.9.2 is the latest version at the time I'm writing this) and put the downloaded files in some folder, let's say a "kernel" folder in your home directory.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Then, to install it, use the following commands (assuming you've placed the deb files in a folder called "kernel" in your home directory):</div></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>cd ~/kernel<br />sudo dpkg -i *.deb</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Optional:</b> for<b> TuxOnIce</b> to work, firstly <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-help/power-hibernate.html">enable hibernate</a> since it's disabled in Ubuntu by default. Then, download the <i>tuxonice-userui</i> deb for your Ubuntu version / architecture from <a href="https://launchpad.net/~tuxonice/+archive/ppa/+packages?field.name_filter=tuxonice-userui&field.status_filter=published&field.series_filter=">HERE</a> and install it, then run the following command to get the TuxOnIce text user interface to work:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo ln -s /usr/lib/tuxonice-userui/tuxoniceui /usr/local/sbin/tuxoniceui_text</code></pre><br />That's all you need to do for TuxOnIce to work (if hibernate is working on your machine, obviously). <br /><br /><b>And finally</b><b>, restart your computer.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>If later on you want to remove pf-kernel</b> and go back to the Linux Kernel you were using before, remove the installed packages using Synaptic (linux-image-*-pf and linux-headers-*-pf) or, to do this automatically via the command line, use the following commands:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>pfkernel=$(dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-.*pf | sed -e 's/-pf.*/-pf/g')<br />sudo apt-get remove $pfkernel</code></pre>And then restart the computer.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>For other Linux distributions or if you want to compile your own Kernel, see the pf-kernel <a href="http://pf.natalenko.name/">homepage</a> for download links.</b></div></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>seen on <a href="http://www.lffl.org/2013/05/pf-kernel-disponibile-la-versione-392.html">lffl.org</a>, image via wikipedia</i></div>

Get Better Linux Desktop Performance And More With pf-kernel

pf-kernel is a custom Linux Kernel that comes with some popular patches not merged into the mainline Kernel, such as: -ck patchset with BFS...

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Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="ram" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3UZk_Ym5TKs/URzCNMJ7jXI/AAAAAAAANsA/XAgqCLK_9ZM/s220/ram.jpg" /></div><br /><b><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">Profile Sync Daemon</a> is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes </b>(useful for SSDs, some would say)<b>, increased speed and responsiveness. </b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The tool supports most browsers</b>: <b>Chromium, Google Chrome, Firefox (stable, beta, aurora and <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/install-firefox-nightly-from-ubuntu-ppa.html">firefox-trunk</a>), Conkeror, Midori, Opera</b> (including <b>Opera Next</b>) and <b>Qupzilla</b> and is based on an old script (we've covered it on <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-mounting-profile-in.html">WebUpd8</a> back in 2009), with some extra features: this is a daemonized script and has recovery protection, as well as support for all the above mentioned browsers as opposed to the old script which only supports Firefox. It's also a lot easier to use.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Since RAM content is cleared on reboot, Profile Sync Daemon <b>automatically syncs the profile back to the physical disk</b> using a symbolic link and rsync at a given time interval. Furthermore, the profile is synced back to the hard disk before you shut down or restart your computer, so no profile data is lost. Still, <b>use it at your own risk!</b></div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">By default, Profile Sync Daemon syncs all your browsers profiles in RAM, but this can be changed from its configuration file, along with some other options.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install Profile Sync Daemon</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Profile Sync Daemon is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Chakra Linux, Debian and Gentoo.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Before installing it, make a backup of your browser profile just in case!</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Too install it in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graysky/utils<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install profile-sync-daemon</code></pre><br />For <b>Arch Linux</b>, install it via <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/profile-sync-daemon">AUR</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">For <b>other Linux distributions</b>, see the Profile Sync Daemon <a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">GitHub</a> page.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>After the installation, you must configure it</b>. The instructions below are for Ubuntu and may be different for other Linux distributions (I'll link to the Profile Sync Daemon Arch Linux wiki at the bottom of the article for more info). Open <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/psd.conf</code></pre><br />then scroll to <i>USERS=""</i> and add your username, example:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>USERS="andrew"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Save the file but don't close it</b> - just switch to a terminal and run the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>profile-sync-daemon parse</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This should display all the browser profiles Profile Sync Daemon can sync to RAM. Now that you know all the browsers / profiles available on your system that this tool supports, go back to the text editor where you were editing <i>/etc/psd.conf,</i> scroll down to <i>#BROWSERS=""</i>, uncomment it (remove the "#") and add the browsers for which you want to mount the profile in RAM (if they showed up when running "profile-sync-daemon parse"), separated by spaces. Examples:</div><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox"</code></pre>or:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox chromium"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you don't uncomment this, all the supported browser profiles will use tmpfs.<br /><br /><br />See if you need to change anything else in this file (you usually don't need to change anything else because the <i>VOLATILE</i> path is automatically set based on the Linux distribution used, so it's set to <i>/run/shm</i> by default in Ubuntu), then save it.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Now you need to close the browsers added to <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> - make sure they are not still running! - and start the Profile Sync Damon:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo service psd start</code></pre>That's it.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Optional: more frequent syncs to disk</b>. By default, Profile Sync Daemon runs every hour (using a cron.hourly job) and syncs your browser profile(s) to the disk, but if you want more frequent syncs, you can add a cron job:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>crontab -e</code></pre>And add this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/profile-sync-daemon sync &> /dev/null</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The above line will sync your browser profile(s) to the disk every 5 minutes, but you can change this to anything you want (for more info, see the <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto">Cron howto</a>).</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>How to check if Profile Sync Daemon is working</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s1600/tmpfs-run-shm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" border="0" height="103" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s320/tmpfs-run-shm.png" title="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" width="320" /></a></div><br />To see if Profile Sync Daemon is working and your browser profile is using tmpfs, you can navigate to /run/shm (in Ubuntu; on Debian it should be <i>/dev/shm</i>) and see if your profiles show up there. You can also check your browser profile directory (e.g.: <i>~/.mozilla/firefox</i>) to see if the profile folder (e.g., for Firefox, it's usually called <i>123456.default</i>, where 123456 are some random letters / numbers) is now a symbolic link to a folder in <i>/run/shm</i>.</div><br /><br />Further info:<br /><ul><li><a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon</a> - instructions for Arch Linux (should also work for other Linux distributions using systemd) and generic info</li><li><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon</a></li></ul>

Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

Profile Sync Daemon is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes (useful ...

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Enable TRIM On SSD (Solid-State Drives) In Ubuntu For Better Performance

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCRPfV7gNz8/UPVkM5Ro5PI/AAAAAAAAMtg/NVO3xwQ5lOg/s1600/kingston-ssd-120gb-v200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="kingston ssd 120gb v200" border="0" height="178" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCRPfV7gNz8/UPVkM5Ro5PI/AAAAAAAAMtg/NVO3xwQ5lOg/s320/kingston-ssd-120gb-v200.jpg" title="kingston ssd 120gb v200" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>TRIM allows the OS to "<i>inform a solid-state drive (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YLTY2O/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weup-21-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006YLTY2O">SSD</a>) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally</i>". Without using TRIM, the SSD speed decreases after a while so if you have a solid-state drive that supports TRIM, you should enable it so your SSD remains fast over time.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This isn't easy to benchmark because the performance decreases over time so you'd neet to check the SSD speed constantly for a few months to see exactly how the SSD is affected when TRIM is not enabled. But if your SSD read / write speed decreases a lot over time and you haven't enabled TRIM, this may be way.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Some articles mention using online discard</b> - enabling TRIM by adding the "discard" option to /etc/fstab -, <b>but there are many <a href="http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html">who</a> <a href="https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337">say</a> this isn't a good idea for most solid-state drives</b> and you'll get a pretty significant performance hit when trying to delete a large number of small files. So <b>below I'll let you know how to use both of these methods: online discard (not recommended) and the recommended way: using fstrim and a cron (anacron) job.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Note: the instructions below have been tested in Ubuntu, but they may (most probably) work with other Linux distributions as well.</i></div><br /><a name='more'></a><b>Before enabling TRIM, you must make sure:</b><br /><ul><li>you're using the Linux Kernel 2.6.33 or newer</li><li>your SSD supports TRIM</li><li>the partition(s) are EXT4 or BTRFS<b>*</b></li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>*</b> Since not many people are using BTRFS, this post will only cover enabling TRIM on EXT4 partitions.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>If you're unsure if your SSD supports TRIM, you can run the following command:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "TRIM supported"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Where "<i>/dev/sda</i>" is the solid-state drive (it may be <i>/dev/sdb</i>, <i>/dev/sdc</i>, etc. for you), and the command should return something like this: "<i>Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 blocks)</i>" (if there's no output, your SSD doesn't support TRIM).  If you don't know what to use here, you can get a list of hard disks and their partitions by using the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo fdisk -l</code></pre><br /><br /><h2>Enable TRIM for solid-state drives (SSD) in Linux</h2><br /><h3>Using online discard (fstab) - not recommended</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If the conditions above are met, you can proceed to enable TRIM for your SSD. <b>If you want to use the online discard option (not recommended!)</b>, open <i>/etc/fstab</i> as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/fstab</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And add the "discard" option (separated by a comma and no space!) to the SSD partitions you want to enable TRIM for. Here's an example:</div><pre class="source-code"><code><file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass><br /># / was on /dev/sdb1 during installation<br />UUID=1cd2fc4f-7d99-4c7a-8ea7-6f9a2d5e5960 / ext4 <b>discard</b>,errors=remount-ro 0 1</code></pre><br /><br /><h3>Using a daily cron job - recommended</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Using a daily cron job, the SSD trimming will occur once every day.<b> </b><br /><br /><b>To use a daily cron job</b> (so the trimming will occur once a day) <b>for TRIM</b> <b>(fstrim)</b>, open <i>/etc/cron.daily/trim</i> as root with a text editor (<i>/etc/cron.daily/trim</i> doesn't exist so this will create the file):</div><pre class="source-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/cron.daily/trim</code></pre> and paste this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>#!/bin/sh<br />LOG=/var/log/trim.log<br />echo "*** $(date -R) ***" >> $LOG<br />fstrim -v / >> $LOG<br />fstrim -v /home >> $LOG</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The last two commands in the code above perform the actual trimming</b> for the root (/) and home (/home) partition and<b> you need to edit them</b>: here, add the SSD partitions for which you want to enable the daily TRIM job (usually, you must add "/" if the root partition is on the SSD and "/home" if you've set up a separate home partition). </div><br />Before saving the file, you can <b>check if the fstrim command works:</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo fstrim -v /</code></pre><br />The output should look similar to this:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>andrei@ubuntu-desktop:~$ sudo fstrim -v /<br />/: 8158715904 bytes were trimmed</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Once you've added your SSD partitions, save the file and make it executable using the following command:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/trim</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Ubuntu executes the daily cron</b> (<b>we're using anacron, so even if your computer is turned off at that time, the job will still be performed later on</b>) <b>jobs at around 06:25</b> so each day after that time, you can check the <i>/var/log/trim.log</i> log file to see the <i>fstrim</i> output.</div><br /><br /><h3>For encrypted partitions</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you're using an encrypted partition, you'll have to perform some extra steps for this to work (<b>not tested because I don't have any encrypted partitions</b>!): edit <i>/etc/default/grub</i> as root:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/default/grub</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And add the following options under <i>GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""</i> (it should be around line 12 in that file):</div><pre class="source-code"><code>"allow-discards root_trim=yes"</code></pre><br />After editing the file, it should look like this:<br /><br /><pre class="source-code"><code>GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`<br />GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"<br /><b>GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="allow-discards root_trim=yes"</b></code></pre><br />Then, save the file and update GRUB:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo update-grub</code></pre><br />Now edit <i>/etc/crypttab</i> as root:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/crypttab</code></pre><br />And add the "discard" option for the SSD partitions, like this (example):<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>#<target name> <source device> <key file> <options><br />var UUID=01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef none luks,<b>discard</b></code></pre><br />And finally, run the following command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo update-initramfs -u -k all</code></pre><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The above instructions (except for the encrypted partition part, which I can't test) have been tested on Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 (SSD: <a class="external" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YLTY2O/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weup-21-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006YLTY2O" rel="nofollow">KINGSTON SVP200S 120 GB</a>).</div><br /><br />References / further reading:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM</a></li><li><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/SSDoptimization">http://wiki.debian.org/SSDoptimization</a></li><li><a href="http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSD/TRIM">http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSD/TRIM</a> (German)</li><li><a href="http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html">http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html </a></li><li><a href="https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337">https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337</a></li></ul>

Enable TRIM On SSD (Solid-State Drives) In Ubuntu For Better Performance

TRIM allows the OS to " inform a solid-state drive ( SSD ) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped intern...

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