Re: [LAU] GNU Denemo chokes a dual core 2 GB server

From: Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Sep 27 2007 - 21:54:52 EEST

hi

On 9/26/07, Lee Revell <rlrevell@email-addr-hidden-job.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/24/07, Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> > hi
> >
> > My question is fairly long to explain, but simple to summarize: why are
> we
> > experiencing delays in playing music compositions using GNU Denemo under
> > Edubuntu over a GB network that should be performing better, and what
> can we
> > do to solve the problem without spending any money?
>
> Smells like an NFS problem to me. What do the CPU and IO utilization
> look like on the server when this occurs?

Well, I am sort of a simple end user who is gradually coming up to speed
with the CLI, and so I don't always have answers to questions like this.
But I will give it a go. Since we are using a 'buntu OS, we have a GNOME
GUI, and there is a system monitor that was written by Kevin Vandersloot and
Benoit Dejean that is just called System Monitor, version 2.18.11 . That
shows that the CPUs (there are 2) are maxed out. There is still room in
memory, though, IIRC. We have successfully avoided the problem for the past
several days by initiating playback in sequential fashion, as opposed to
having the kids all initiate Denemo playback simultaneously. So I don't
recall exactly what the RAM and swap impact is. But the CPUs are both
usually hovering right up there between 98% and 100%.

The interesting thing is that when I use BASH to kill timidity, the CPU
impact drops dramatically. And then we can just go back to initiating
playback sequentially, rather than simultaneously, and we are good to go.

  What NFS mount options are
> in use?

Sorry, not sure, how would I find that out?

We did see an error message upon server reboot that says something like
timidity has not been properly configured, and we need to go into
/etc/default/timidity to enable ALSA, and so I am just trying to set aside
the time to do that. In public school education in California, the budgets
are so thin that educators are usually running from one thing to another
like chickens with their heads cut off. And I am a volunteer, because the
school can't afford anyone to provide even the level one tech support that I
am providing. And without me, there would be no GNU Linux lab at all. I
approached the school and offered to help them build this lab, and then we
went and got money from the California Microsoft anti-trust settlement, and
we built this lab. I'm not blowing my own horn here, and our local LUGs
have been really helpful, as has the company that sold us the server. That
company, Zareason, has volunteered a bunch of staff time to help us as much
as they can. My point is that things go in fits and starts here.

But the good thing is that the school can't afford Microsoft solutions for
the kids, and so last year we graduated our first 8th grade class, and they
saw nothing but OpenOffice.org and GNU Linux on the desktop. That really
feels great!

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Received on Fri Sep 28 00:15:04 2007

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