On 9/26/07, Lee Revell <address@hidden> wrote:
On 9/24/07, Christian Einfeldt <address@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!