[CentOS] measuring kernel speed

Sat May 8 13:49:25 UTC 2010
JohnS <jses27 at gmail.com>

On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 08:35 -0400, Mag Gam wrote:
> At our Physics research labs we do a lot with low latency networks. We
> have been using Centos for over 3 years now and its been great! We
> would like to tune and optimize our setup by removing unneeded
> packages -- kernel modules to be specific. I was wondering, how does
> one measure the speed of the kernel. Is that even possible?
---
Very possible indeed and Interesting also.

You need the RT Kernel to do so. You can do so by using "Latencytop".
Needs to be compiled against the RT kernel then ran as root.  You can
not run it as a user.  The RT Kernel all ready has what is needed to run
it.  The main line does not. 

Bad News: CentOS does not yet offer a RT  Built Kernel.  So you have to
roll your own which is not hard to do so. Which requires the whole set
as in you would want the rt trace kernel also. I build my own plus the
other grid packages.

kernel-rt-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-devel-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-vanilla-devel-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-trace-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-doc-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-vanilla-2.6.24.7-149.el5
kernel-rt-trace-devel-2.6.24.7-149.el5

There is of one place that has a RT Kernel if you want to try it so
maybe that person will post a link to this thread for you.

John