[LAU] Building a low latency friendly kernel

Robin Gareus robin at gareus.org
Wed Jan 26 18:07:31 UTC 2011


On 01/26/2011 06:34 PM, S. Massy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering whether there were any articles/pointers to building an
> audio friendly kernel, whether RT or stock. I'm looking for informations
> such as what might be options, or even features, which are hurtful to
> low-latency. Looking for low latency kernel info on google, btw, yields
> outdated information, by and large.

search for "realtime preemt" or go directly to
https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RT_PREEMPT_HOWTO

To /just build/ a rt kernel you download the vanilla kernel source and
the latest rt patch: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/
# tar xfj linux-2.6.33.7.tar.bz2
# mv -vi linux-2.6.33.7 linux-2.6.33.7.2-rt30
# cd linux-2.6.33.7.2-rt30
# bzcat ../patch-2.6.33.7.2-rt30.bz2 | patch -p1
# make config # :)
# make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot kernel_image

configuring the kernel is the hardest part.. :-)
After installing you'll also want to do some additional setup: eg
install Rui's rtirq script and tweak limits.conf

As for "stock" options: This issue has recently been discussed on this
list: see the thread "[LAU] rt kernel in debian/squeeze"
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2011-January/thread.html

http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/real_time_info has lots of links and
list of audio-distributions.

HTH,
robin

-- 
Robin Gareus
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