[linux-audio-user] Kernel tweaking for low latency

[Lee Revell]

On Tue, 2004-09-07 at 20:45, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-09-07 at 08:47, Joe Hartley wrote:
> >>So my advice for a Linux audio workstation?  Check out the audio distros
> >>mentioned above, pick one, and configure the system from the ground up
> >>around it.  Just itching to try the latest 2.6 kernel patches?  Great!
> >>I'm really glad people want to blaze that trail!  But it's best done on
> >>a machine other than the one you want to do recording on this weekend,
> >>or at the very least in another partition that won't affect your working
> >>environment.  And then check out the websites for optimizing IRQs and
> >>hard drives and turning off CD polling and every other trick compiled
> >>for setting up a Linux audio workstation.
> > If you can, it might be better to wait for binaries of the new 2.6 low
> > latency kernel.  All of the stability issues seem to be solved.  The
> > last major issue was getting it working on x86-64 which seems to also be
> > resolved; it has been stable for a week or two on ia32 UP and SMP as
> > well as PPC.  The only a things that are still being worked out AFAICT
> > are things like the init scripts to activate the low latency features.
> > I would expect binary kernel packages for your favorite distro to be
> > available any day now, if they aren't already.
> 
> So does mean the stock kernel.org 2.6.9 kernel will include these 
> patches? or that there is now (or will soon be) a standard patch? I see 
> now that Ingo relased an -R6 patch yesterday and -R7 and -R8 today, not 
> 3 hours apart.
> 

There will be a standard patch as soon as the patch is stable.  All
identified bugs have been fixed.  Since the LKML testers have found all
the bugs that we can, the next step is for real linux audio users to
test it.  And there will certainly be more bugs found, but, they can't
be fixed until they are discovered.

Basically if you have any important work to do, then stick with your
current kernel for now.  If you want to be on the bleeding edge and
don't mind patching your kernel and posting bug reports if it crashes,
then go for it.

Lee