My next motherboard

Quote from nitro:

I am installing gentoo linux distro now onto an old machine in order to gain experience installing it and optimizing it before I install it on the Tyan. I can tell you that installing gentoo is definetly not for beginners. Relatively easy for me, but man this better be WAAAAY superior than my old friend FreeBSD considering all this effort.

The reason for gentoo is to see if I can get every ounce of performance out of the machine, and linux in general because I cannot wait around for a retail 64-bit version of Windows.

I am going to experiment with several "linux" distro's to see which one gives me the best SMP performance. Really, what I need is the best I/O (networking) performance and the best kernel.

I have been away from U/Linux systems for so long that I feel a little bit out of touch.

nitro
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Hi nitro,

Nice to hear about your gentoo/linux start. As you know, I dumped all the rest a long time ago and run all my four rigs on gentoo. I'm curious to hear about your Tyan experience. Curious to know, did you do an install from stage1 on, or did you do the stage3?

Be good,
nononsense
 
Quote from nononsense:

Hi nitro,

Nice to hear about your gentoo/linux start. As you know, I dumped all the rest a long time ago and run all my four rigs on gentoo. I'm curious to hear about your Tyan experience. Curious to know, did you do an install from stage1 on, or did you do the stage3?

Be good,
nononsense
More...
Hi nononsense,

As a first attempt, I chose the least optimal route and the easiest install in order to gain confidence. Also, I need some form of instant gratification and doing three stages would test my patience even more as a beginner.

Hence, I installed a stage three. I did do a gentoo-dev-sources kernel installation which I am compiling as I write this since doing that "optimization" is so simple. However, I am using genkernel instead of manual configuration of the kernel, which probably defeats some of the purpose of gentoo-dev-sources kernel. I also only did an -O2 instead of an -O3. As I said, choosing this route is to gain confidence in the distro to see if it gets in my way or becomes my partner. So far it is alot of work, but it installs without a glitch.

When I install gentoo on the Tyan, I will probably go out of my way to install the most optimized 64-bit version for network I/O and SMP. As I have very little experience with gentoo, this will probably be an iterative process.

What would be great would be if there was a config.make that automatically gave you the best performance options for SMP and Networking I/O preconfigured.

Also, I wish there was some way to test the system for performance after each configuration and rebuild to see if the changes made any difference by doing simulated loads on the network and CPUs and logging things like dropped packets, etc.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:

Hi nononsense,

As a first attempt, I chose the least optimal route and the easiest install in order to gain confidence. Also, I need some form of instant gratification and doing three stages would test my patience even more as a beginner.

Hence, I installed a stage three. I did do a gentoo-dev-sources kernel installation which I am compiling as I write this since doing that "optimization" is so simple. However, I am using genkernel instead of manual configuration of the kernel, which probably defeats some of the purpose of gentoo-dev-sources kernel. I also only did an -O2 instead of an -O3. As I said, choosing this route is to gain confidence in the distro to see if it gets in my way or becomes my partner. So far it is alot of work, but it installs without a glitch.

When I install gentoo on the Tyan, I will probably go out of my way to install the most optimized 64-bit version for network I/O and SMP. As I have very little experience with gentoo, this will probably be an iterative process.

What would be great would be if there was a config.make that automatically gave you the best performance options for SMP and Networking I/O preconfigured.

Also, I wish there was some way to test the system for performance after each configuration and rebuild to see if the changes made any difference by doing simulated loads on the network and CPUs and logging things like dropped packets, etc.

nitro
More...
Hi nitro,

In fact I was curious. After flip-flopping a bit I now stick to stage3 also. I'm not sure if it is worth going from stage1. In theory it should but opinions seem to be devided on this. I have been compiling with both -O2 and -O3. I now stick to mainly -O2. You may not believe this but when I compile a system for my top P4 I can even copy it over to on old PentiumPro without any problem!

Now all depends on how adventurous you are. If you choose some of the more recent development kernels things may behave quite differently. Taking some time to go through the gentoo forums is perhaps the best guide. I think that it is very wise to be rather conservative at start. Once you get everything going, you can try out many things.

You have to watch out a bit with portage. Read things well - also the forum on portage. I never had a mishap but many people seem to have had broken systems for various reasons. Best is to make image backup of your partition. I use 'partimage' on the knoppix livecd. In this way I have a 100% good image of my gentoo before I do a major portage upgrade operation.

I would recommend using manual configuration instead of the genkernel. If you did it once, I'm sure you never will want to touch genkernel again. If you configure a system from a running system - not livecd - you can use '#make xconfig' instead of '#make menuconfig' for doing your configuration.

Of course, SMP and 64bits, I did never try this. I have SMP running on my older 2* PIII computer.
I saw something that may interest you though I haven't looked into this: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=169922&highlight=tyan

PS: there is even something called a "nitro-kernel"
 
Hi nononsense.

Thanks for the recommendations and the link :)

nitro
Quote from nononsense:

Hi nitro,

In fact I was curious. After flip-flopping a bit I now stick to stage3 also. I'm not sure if it is worth going from stage1. In theory it should but opinions seem to be devided on this. I have been compiling with both -O2 and -O3. I now stick to mainly -O2. You may not believe this but when I compile a system for my top P4 I can even copy it over to on old PentiumPro without any problem!

Now all depends on how adventurous you are. If you choose some of the more recent development kernels things may behave quite differently. Taking some time to go through the gentoo forums is perhaps the best guide. I think that it is very wise to be rather conservative at start. Once you get everything going, you can try out many things.

You have to watch out a bit with portage. Read things well - also the forum on portage. I never had a mishap but many people seem to have had broken systems for various reasons. Best is to make image backup of your partition. I use 'partimage' on the knoppix livecd. In this way I have a 100% good image of my gentoo before I do a major portage upgrade operation.

I would recommend using manual configuration instead of the genkernel. If you did it once, I'm sure you never will want to touch genkernel again. If you configure a system from a running system - not livecd - you can use '#make xconfig' instead of '#make menuconfig' for doing your configuration.

Of course, SMP and 64bits, I did never try this. I have SMP running on my older 2* PIII computer.
I saw something that may interest you though I haven't looked into this: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=169922&highlight=tyan

PS: there is even something called a "nitro-kernel"
More...
 
Quote from nitro:

I am installing gentoo linux distro now onto an old machine in order to gain experience installing it and optimizing it before I install it on the Tyan. I can tell you that installing gentoo is definetly not for beginners. Relatively easy for me, but man this better be WAAAAY superior than my old friend FreeBSD considering all this effort.

.....

I have been away from *inux systems for so long that I feel a little bit out of touch.

nitro
More...

All of our systems are now on Linux including our SMP boxes - both 32 and 64. Fedora core installs without incident on these. We also use scientific linux distros and have evaluated gentoo but we decided to stick with fedora and scientific distros. IMHO this stuff is easy to get configured as compared to the equivalent Windows configurations .. and its faster for our ported apps.
 
Quote from linuxtrader:

All of our systems are now on Linux including our SMP boxes - both 32 and 64. Fedora core installs without incident on these. We also use scientific linux distros and have evaluated gentoo but we decided to stick with fedora and scientific distros. IMHO this stuff is easy to get configured as compared to the equivalent Windows configurations .. and its faster for our ported apps.
More...
Hi linuxtrader,

What do you mean by "scientific linux distros"?
I ran some time on Fedora #1. No comparison with gentoo regarding updating. True, initially you need to do some more thinking with gentoo.

Don't think that you are any "safer" going with Fedora. If you look for this you should perhaps buy Redhat. Fedora is simply the prerelease testing platform for RH.

With gentoo you have a rather wide spectrum of kernels to choose from, even if you want to play it very "safe". Compared to Redhat or Fedora, I found the gentoo portage system to be absolutely superior. Of course you can get good mileage out of Fedora.

Be good,
nononsense
 
Quote from nononsense:

Hi linuxtrader,

What do you mean by "scientific linux distros"?
More...

Just type it in a search engine and view their site.

We run our own repository so automatic updates or on-demand updates are no problem.

YUM and APT are similar to the portage system.

At some point you need to control the standard ditro within your company and the easiest way to do this is to run your own repository: easy to set up IMHO......
 
Quote from linuxtrader:

Just type it in a search engine and view their site.

We run our own repository so automatic updates or on-demand updates are no problem.

YUM and APT are similar to the portage system.

At some point you need to control the standard ditro within your company and the easiest way to do this is to run your own repository: easy to set up IMHO......
More...

As long as you are happy with it.
 
Quote from nitro:

The reason for gentoo is to see if I can get every ounce of performance out of the machine, and linux in general because I cannot wait around for a retail 64-bit version of Windows.
More...
Nitro,

Seeing as you require massive real time efficiency and performance, why not operate a cluster of single or dual CPU machines?

You once mentioned that you gather a ton of statistics during the day. Are you using all of these statistics to trade? Is it possible to precisely log your market data, generate the bare minimum statistics to trade, and then generate other statistics offline (overnight, on other servers, etc)? That might allow improved scalability to cover additional markets and types of statistics without running into a real time CPU crunch. Come to think of it, you probably already do this.

-Prophet
 
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