[Bug 1833322] Re: Consider removing irqbalance from default install on desktop images

[Doug Smythies]

Thank you for your incredibly thorough analysis of this. Since finding
this via bug 2046470, I have tried, without success, to create a test to
show any difference in performance or power or whatever between
irqbalance enabled/disabled on my Ubuntu 20.04 test server.

While my vote carries little weight here, I give it anyhow:

A) Change it from an opt-out to an opt-in and remove the dependency
   from ubuntu-standard

Mainly because, and from my own investigation, I agree with:

> To me this seems to be a perfect case for a few special images/deployments
> known to match the workload profile that needs this to enable it.
> It is also more likely that a professional admin of such a large scale machine
> (or cluster thereof) can make the opt-in decision and evaluation better than
> expecting every user of Ubuntu to think about an opt-out.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1833322

Title:
  Consider removing irqbalance from default install on desktop images

Status in irqbalance package in Ubuntu:
  New
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.

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