[Bug 1833322] Re: Please consider no more having irqbalance enabled by default (per image/use-case/TBD)

[Christian Ehrhardt ]

Hey Henry, thanks for chiming in and I agree in general that tech moved on.
Myself and others said similar before, thanks for adding more details and voices - that is what such a discussion is about.

> they just don't go ping-ponging around between

In particular on this aspect, so much has happened with fast devices
often not only "not being bottle-necked" but even  I/O interaction
routing smartly, I mentioned for example rps/xps on here before.

Still, there are even today a few workloads - usually high utilization large scale loads that benefit.
Thanks @John for carrying a few of them forward to this bug!


But the more I read, the more people chime in, ... the more one pattern seems to crystallize (for me).
I'll try to summarize my gut-feeling so far... (which is my opinion so far, not more):
"""
While it seems a few high intensity workloads still can benefit, those are of the kind that are usually hand-optimized and could easily pull-in irqbalance if needed.

On the other hand the majority of workloads do not care either way - at
least not in an easily provable way.

And furthermore most of the need to have it in the past has been
replaced by newer I/O architectures.

Finally there also have been some cases that suffered from irqbalance
being enabled. Those cases in particular seem to be those of end-users,
often Desktop end users that might not always tune their system
intensely.

For consistency between Server and Desktop I'd prefer to change it in
both in the same way, while the cases still benefiting all where
server'ish there hasn't been a case that would need it by default.

Overall that makes me think that we could indeed change it to not be enabled by default anymore in the upcoming Noble release.
"""


I know that Steve (@vorlon) wanted to comment on this as well, maybe we have sufficient statements, opinions and at least a bit of data so far to have a decision for Noble before Feature freeze?

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to ubuntu-meta in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1833322

Title:
  Please consider no more having irqbalance enabled by default (per
  image/use-case/TBD)

Status in Ubuntu on IBM z Systems:
  Confirmed
Status in irqbalance package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in ubuntu-meta package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  as per https://github.com/pop-os/default-settings/issues/60

  Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):

  $ cat /etc/os-release
  NAME="Pop!_OS"
  VERSION="19.04"
  ID=ubuntu
  ID_LIKE=debian
  PRETTY_NAME="Pop!_OS 19.04"
  VERSION_ID="19.04"
  HOME_URL="https://system76.com/pop"
  SUPPORT_URL="http://support.system76.com"
  BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues"
  PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://system76.com/privacy"
  VERSION_CODENAME=disco
  UBUNTU_CODENAME=disco

  Related Application and/or Package Version (run apt policy $PACKAGE
  NAME):

  $ apt policy irqbalance
  irqbalance:
  Installed: 1.5.0-3ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.5.0-3ubuntu1
  Version table:
  *** 1.5.0-3ubuntu1 500
  500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu disco/main amd64 Packages
  100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  $ apt rdepends irqbalance
  irqbalance
  Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: ubuntu-standard
  gce-compute-image-packages

  Issue/Bug Description:

  as per konkor/cpufreq#48 and
  http://konkor.github.io/cpufreq/faq/#irqbalance-detected

  irqbalance is technically not needed on desktop systems (supposedly it
  is mainly for servers), and may actually reduce performance and power
  savings. It appears to provide benefits only to server environments
  that have relatively-constant loading. If it is truly a server-
  oriented package, then it shouldn't be installed by default on a
  desktop/laptop system and shouldn't be included in desktop OS images.

  Steps to reproduce (if you know):

  This is potentially an issue with all default installs.

  Expected behavior:

  n/a

  Other Notes:

  I can safely remove it via "sudo apt purge irqbalance" without any
  apparent adverse side-effects. If someone is running a situation where
  they need it, then they always have the option of installing it from
  the repositories.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-z-systems/+bug/1833322/+subscriptions