Author: pizzaman

To get both sd cards working I needed to add a file to /etc/modprobe.d/sd-card.conf with “options sdhci debug_quirks=1” in it and also modify /boot/grub/menu.lst so “# defoptions=quiet splash pciehp.pciehp_force=1 pciehp.pciehp_poll_mode=1” is in it.

Well, the intel drivers 2.6 were not the ones who caused the improvement on the FPS in glxgears, so must have been the new kernel instead.

xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.7.1

pizzaman@monsterxx8:~$ glxgears

712 frames in 5.0 seconds = 142.184 FPS
3312 frames in 5.0 seconds = 662.324 FPS
3690 frames in 5.0 seconds = 737.900 FPS
3868 frames in 5.0 seconds = 773.471 FPS
3775 frames in 5.0 seconds = 754.883 FPS
3862 frames in 5.0 seconds = 772.306 FPS
3854 frames in 5.0 seconds = 770.738 FPS
3809 frames in 5.0 seconds = 761.785 FPS
3820 frames in 5.0 seconds = 763.819 FPS
3913 frames in 5.0 seconds = 782.482 FPS
3857 frames in 5.0 seconds = 771.238 FPS

Well. Adding the optimized kernel gave a marginal increase in the video performace, but I just got a major jump in FPS:

pizzaman@monsterxx8:~$ glxgears

1978 frames in 5.0 seconds = 395.584 FPS

3534 frames in 5.0 seconds = 706.792 FPS

3707 frames in 5.0 seconds = 741.368 FPS

3673 frames in 5.0 seconds = 734.490 FPS

3637 frames in 5.0 seconds = 727.265 FPS

3675 frames in 5.0 seconds = 734.837 FPS

by switching back to the xorg 2.6 intel drivers (2:2.6.3-0ubuntu9.4) are setting the Apperance->Visual Effects to Normal from the default setting of None. I am going to switch back to the 2.7 intel drivers and see if the performance is the same.

 

UPDATE: The MAIN reason I had this major spike was that the previous tests where done with VNC connected, although the client was minimized and there was not data being transfered over the network, still just having the VNC server connected seemed to have caused a 500 FPS hit on glxgears.

Nevertheless running the kuki kernel still gave a good improvement in FPS.

Well, I had several options to improve performance for the AAO. I realized one of the drawbacks with Ubuntu, specially in underpowered systems is the bloated kernel which is compiled in a general way for any system that might use it. This lack optimization, I’m sure, it’s a major contributor to the sluggishness of the AAO.

Downloaded :
Kernel 2.6.31-rc7 headers+image from http://www.kuki.me

after that just clicked on both to install

Results :
pizzaman@monsterxx8:~$ glxgears
1013 frames in 5.0 seconds = 202.283 FPS
1095 frames in 5.0 seconds = 218.342 FPS
1103 frames in 5.0 seconds = 220.491 FPS
770 frames in 5.0 seconds = 153.872 FPS
1021 frames in 5.0 seconds = 204.021 FPS
982 frames in 5.0 seconds = 195.903 FPS
952 frames in 5.0 seconds = 190.391 FPS
889 frames in 5.0 seconds = 177.743 FPS
1056 frames in 5.0 seconds = 209.370 FPS
981 frames in 5.0 seconds = 196.015 FPS
906 frames in 5.0 seconds = 181.198 FPS
904 frames in 5.0 seconds = 180.167 FPS

A nice improvement, with little effort.

Been doing some benchmarking with glxgears ( I know it’s a no no). Trying to lower the CPU usage of xorg which currently it at up to around 30% at some times just updating $top. I’m starting with :

xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.7.1-0ubuntu1~xup~1
Running on an unmaximized window.

pizzaman@monsterxx8:~$ glxgears
get fences failed: -1
param: 6, val: 0
641 frames in 5.0 seconds = 128.159 FPS
902 frames in 5.0 seconds = 178.897 FPS
767 frames in 5.0 seconds = 153.358 FPS
791 frames in 5.0 seconds = 158.163 FPS
753 frames in 5.0 seconds = 149.902 FPS
767 frames in 5.0 seconds = 153.033 FPS
754 frames in 5.0 seconds = 150.108 FPS
830 frames in 5.0 seconds = 165.593 FPS
812 frames in 5.0 seconds = 161.758 FPS
700 frames in 5.0 seconds = 139.640 FPS
765 frames in 5.0 seconds = 152.974 FPS
691 frames in 5.0 seconds = 138.121 FPS
717 frames in 5.0 seconds = 143.342 FPS
853 frames in 5.0 seconds = 169.600 FPS

Will see if I can get out any improvements.

Reminder for ping.fm * before a link stops ping.fm from shortening it. http://www.test.com

Added the latest drivers for intel chipsets to see if I gain any performance improvement. Source for the drivers http://ping.fm/7qn2n . Reference http://ping.fm/etcz8

This is a message to remind myself of the different ways of posting thru ping.fm. To post a blog -> @b Title^Body, microblog -> @m and status @s. Then to post to the different services @lj for livejournal, @id for identi.ca, @fl for flickr, etc.

Acer Aspire One : Wireless with Ubuntu. After a while trying to figure out why the wireless seemed to be not realiable with the athk5 drivers (will get disabled and greyed out in network manager after using kismet for example and wouldn’t come back even after a reboot). I found this comment from the developers of the acer_wmi drivers : “NOTE: The Acer Aspire One is not supported hardware. It cannot work with acer-wmi until Acer fix their ACPI-WMI implementation on them, so has been blacklisted until that happens.” (http://ping.fm/ijBLT). The solution was simply to remove the driver with “sudo rmmod acer_wmi” and then adding it to the blacklisted modules on /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-wifi.conf. That fixed the greyed out wireless connection in network manager and also fixed the wireless led.

Finished installing gpsdrive + kismet + postgresql + mysql + openstreetmaps + mapnik to get a database of scanned AP’s. Had a few problems with access to mysql and also the connection between kismet and postgresql to access the openstreemaps database, it still doesn’t load correctly at first until you add and remove the check marks of mapnik a couple times.