[LAU] priorities of interrupts or other fixes

Hi Normally my ubuntu 9.10 with ubuntu stock kernel performs just fine for me. I'm running through an edirol FA66 firewire sound card with 8ms latency. However now I'm starting to prepare for some live performances, and now things could (or should oar even *must*) perform better. As some might know, my main audio application is renoise, but since it's closed source, maybe we should focus more on how the problem manifests itself in other ways? Good example: I get two xrun about 2 seconds apart) when I open a gnome-terminal. This is with no jackclients running, just qjackctl on 8ms latency through the firewire card. This is normally no problem since if I work in renoise things really stable (no xruns) and responsive. But for live usage I'm gonna throw other applications (PD, chuck, sooperlooper) into the equation, so... About my setup: Laptop, 2GHz dual core, 2G ram. atte@vestbjerg:~$ uname -r 2.6.31-20-generic I have this in my limits.conf: @audio - rtprio 99 @audio - memlock unlimited I notice a drastic improvement if I set the frequency govenor to "performance" through the gnome panel applet, but I just discovered (through "grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo" that this only seems to set one core to 2Ghz, the other seems to be running "on demand". Shouldn't they both be running at full steam, and how do I make them? But my first thought (as reflected my the subject) was to raise the priority for the firewire card. However I seem to need help figuring out how to do that. For instance the last time I did this I used 'pidof "IRQ 8', which doesn't work here (neither on ubuntu repo rt-kernel), pidof auto completes to this list: Display all 124 possibilities? (y or n) 0 indicator-users-service 1 init acpid iwl3945 ata_aux jackd atd kacpid avahi-daemon kacpi_hotplug bash kacpi_notify bluetooth khelper bluetooth-applet khpsbpkt bonobo-activation-server khubd compiz.real khungtaskd console-kit-daemon kjournald cpufreq-applet kmmcd cpuset kmpath_handlerd cron knodemgrd_0 cupsd kpsmoused dbus-daemon krfcommd dbus-launch kseriod dd ksnapd devkit-disks-daemon kstriped devkit-power-daemon ksuspend_usbd dhclient kswapd0 ecryptfs-kthrea kthreadd evolution-alarm-notify mgr evolution-data-server-2.28 modem-manager evolution-exchange-storage mono firefox multiload-applet-2 gconfd-2 nautilus gdm-binary netns gdm-session-worker NetworkManager gdm-simple-slave nm-applet gdu-notification-daemon notify-osd getty pdflush gnome-keyring-daemon phy0 gnome-panel polkitd gnome-power-manager polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 gnome-pty-helper ps gnome-screensaver pulseaudio gnome-session python gnome-settings-daemon qjackctl.bin gnome-terminal renoise gnome-volume-control-applet rsyslogd gtk-window-decorator scsi_eh_0 gvfsd scsi_eh_1 gvfsd-burn scsi_eh_2 gvfsd-metadata scsi_eh_3 gvfsd-trash scsi_eh_4 gvfs-fuse-daemon scsi_eh_5 gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor seahorse-daemon gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor sed hald sh My interrupts: atte@vestbjerg:~$ cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 CPU1 0: 332326 331479 IO-APIC-edge timer 1: 784 769 IO-APIC-edge i8042 8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc0 9: 1064 1081 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi 12: 75 78 IO-APIC-edge i8042 14: 3590 3577 IO-APIC-edge ata_piix 15: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge ata_piix 16: 118009 118898 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3, ohci1394 17: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi mmc0 18: 7196 7100 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb7 19: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb6 21: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb4 22: 288 318 IO-APIC-fasteoi HDA Intel 23: 10 10 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb5 28: 6897 6865 PCI-MSI-edge ahci 29: 957 883 PCI-MSI-edge eth0 30: 6253 6394 PCI-MSI-edge i915 31: 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge iwl3945 NMI: 0 0 Non-maskable interrupts LOC: 326940 325631 Local timer interrupts SPU: 0 0 Spurious interrupts CNT: 0 0 Performance counter interrupts PND: 0 0 Performance pending work RES: 265237 265761 Rescheduling interrupts CAL: 60 111 Function call interrupts TLB: 422 295 TLB shootdowns TRM: 0 0 Thermal event interrupts THR: 0 0 Threshold APIC interrupts MCE: 0 0 Machine check exceptions MCP: 2 3 Machine check polls ERR: 0 MIS: 0 About my hardware: atte@vestbjerg:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01) 04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02) 0a:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05) 0a:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22) 0a:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12) 0a:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12) 0a:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff) So basically I'm a bit lost here. Any help or input would be greatly appreciated! -- Atte http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk