On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 11:11 -0400, Jon Masters wrote: > On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 12:57 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote: > > On Fri, 05.06.09 00:21, Jon Masters (jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote: > > Text book RT applications use mlock()/mlockall() to lock themselves > > into memory and make sure they never are swapped out. This is > > something we cannot really do for PA given that map a *lot* of stuff > > into our address space: libraries, SHM segments for communications > > with other clients, cached samples, and so on. If we'd lock all that > > into memory there wouldn't be any memory left for much else > > Yeah, I'm aware of this. But there perhaps should be some option anyway > - after all, you already have all the support code for it, and already > handle setting real time priorities too. In my brief time with a hacked > up local build that does an mlockall right at the beginning of the > mainloop, I am hearing few audio pops and skips on this box. It's > obviously not a longer term solution, just a datapoint. I'll join the PA devel list over the weekend, it's not strictly that Fedora specific now. But one thing I'm wondering is whether you might benefit from splitting PA into a small core-util bit that were lockable and having all the rest outside in separate tasks - that's probably not too feasible at this stage though. I want to help fix whatever problems I'm getting on each of my machines running PA, rather than sound like I'm trashing talking PA as a technology. The sad reality is that Linux audio worked for me more smoothly 14 years ago when I started with Linux (and manually had to set jumpers, run isapnpdump, etc.) than it does now. It was smoother when I had early ESD[0] than it is now, and smoother when I first built experimental ALSA drivers than it is now. Things like PA are a great concept in theory, but they're not of much benefit if (as in my case) the only obvious way I can get an decent experience is to hack my system and run stuff under pasuspender. Jon. [0] And I mean alongside 0.1 enlightment, back when I had the Free Software Song as a ringtone and enjoyed hearing the startup pips as ESD opened the sound device. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
