418. POVRay 3.7 on four-eight cores is several orders of magnitudes slower than serial POVRay 3.6

For some reason I get very poor performance when using POVRay 3.7, which can run rendering in parallel. In contrast, POVRay 3.6 -- which is serial -- renders much, much faster.

I had a particular job with partially transparent objects (similar type of job as set up here: http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/415-briefly-making-polyhedral-figure-in.html) took

• 2h 25 min (8694 seconds) using POVRay 3.6 running in serial

Smallest Alloc:                   9 bytes
Largest  Alloc:              131080 bytes
Peak memory used:          20730898 bytes
Total Scene Processing Times
  Parse Time:    0 hours  0 minutes  0 seconds (0 seconds)
  Photon Time:   0 hours  0 minutes  0 seconds (0 seconds)
  Render Time:   2 hours 24 minutes 54 seconds (8694 seconds)
  Total Time:    2 hours 24 minutes 54 seconds (8694 seconds)

•  14 hours 5 minutes in POVRay 3.7 rc 7 running in parallel (openmp)

Render Time:
  Photon Time:      No photons
  Radiosity Time:   No radiosity
  Trace Time:      14 hours  5 minutes 42 seconds (50742.481 seconds)
              using 4 thread(s) with 201478.244 CPU-seconds total
POV-Ray finished

on a four-core i5-2400 with 16 Gb RAM.

POVRay 3.7 took 16 hours 45 minutes on an eight core AMD FX 8150 with 32 Gb RAM.

Render Time:
  Photon Time:      No photons
  Radiosity Time:   No radiosity
  Trace Time:      16 hours 45 minutes 34 seconds (60334.108 seconds)
              using 8 thread(s) with 472419.334 CPU-seconds total
POV-Ray finished

I rendered with

povray_3.7 +H1000 +W1000 +A0.01 scene.pov

The general trend applies to povray 3.7-rc6 and whatever povray version I was using in Arch a month ago. It also applies to all linux boxes I've tried it on.

I built povray 3.6 and 3.7 as shown here: http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/413-povray-37-rc7-on-debian-wheezy.html

Googling I really only found this: http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/thread/%3C455a0770@news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=349052&toff=450
which is from 2006.

First problem!
Version 3.7.0.beta16 was MUCH slower. Version 3.6.1c took 4m46s, while Version3.7.0.beta16 took 7m43s... that's 60% more! Is there a better build or should I be using some different options?

It was never addressed.

I don't know if the performance of 3.7 is worse then 3.6, or if there's some difference in settings that's slowing things down i.e. whether there's something which I'm doing wrong.

A general list over changes between 3.7 and 3,6 is found here: http://wiki.povray.org/content/Documentation:Tutorial_Section_1#Changes_and_New_Features_Summary
but there's nothing that stands out to me.

417. Briefly: Patching kernel 3.9 with the CK patchset: 3.9-ck-1

Nothing strange here -- basically the same as http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/395-ck-kernel-on-debian-and-patching.html but with updated links.

I haven't found a good and succinct description of what the -ck patch set does and that I could link to here, but here's what it says on the Arch -ck page:

"..many Archers elect to use this package for the BFS' excellent desktop interactivity and responsiveness under any load situation. Additionally, the bfs imparts performance gains beyond interactivity"

I don't know if there are objective benchmarks that one can use to demonstrate an improvement in 'responsiveness and interactivity'. Subjectively, however, I feel that there's a slight improvement. You decide for yourself.

Begin here

sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot build-essential ncurses-dev
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.9.2.tar.xz
tar xvf linux-3.9.2.tar.xz
cd linux-3.9.2/
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/3.0/3.9/3.9-ck1/patch-3.9-ck1.bz2
bunzip2 patch-3.9-ck1.bz2
patch -p1 < patch-3.9-ck1

patching file arch/powerpc/platforms/cell/spufs/sched.c
patching file Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt
patching file Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
patching file fs/proc/base.c
patching file include/linux/init_task.h
patching file include/linux/ioprio.h
patching file include/linux/sched.h
Hunk #6 succeeded at 2738 (offset -10 lines).
patching file init/Kconfig
patching file init/main.c
patching file kernel/delayacct.c
patching file kernel/exit.c
patching file kernel/posix-cpu-timers.c
patching file kernel/sysctl.c
patching file lib/Kconfig.debug
patching file include/linux/jiffies.h
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_ondemand.c
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_conservative.c
patching file kernel/sched/bfs.c
patching file kernel/sched/Makefile
patching file include/uapi/linux/sched.h
patching file include/linux/sched/rt.h
patching file kernel/stop_machine.c
patching file include/linux/swap.h
patching file mm/memory.c
patching file mm/swapfile.c
patching file mm/vmscan.c
patching file arch/x86/Kconfig
patching file kernel/Kconfig.hz
patching file kernel/Kconfig.preempt
patching file Makefile

make-kpkg clean
cat /boot/config-`uname -r`>.config
make oldconfig

You might now be asked a long series of questions about how the kernel should be configured (or you might not be -- depending on what kernel version you're currently running). In MOST cases you can select the default option (i.e. hit enter) but you should still read each question and consider it. Making a mistake won't break your computer, so don't be scared.

Next, start the compilation (will take a while):

time fakeroot make-kpkg -j4 --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers
sudo dpkg -i ../linux*3.9-ck*.deb

where 4 is the number of cores on your machine (note: it only has to do with compiling -- you can use the compiled binaries on any number of cores).

Anyway, that's all -- you've now patched, compiled and installed a new kernel. And it didn't even hurt.

416. Compiling Wine 1.5.30 in a chroot (fixed)

Update 2, 22 May 2013: Thanks to the Anonymous poster who pointed out that wine 1.5.30 was broken! Anyway, I've updated this post with instructions how to patch the wine 1.5.30 sources so that it includes libwine in the final .deb package.

(I normally attached a screenshot of the winecfg about tab, but not this time -- had I done that I would've realised something was wrong. )

It's fixed now. Wine 1.5.30 is OK again.

---

Update 22 May 2013: libwine.so.1 doesn't get included in the deb package, which causes severely reduced functionality. I've confirmed that Wine 1.5.28 built as shown in http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/387-compiling-wine-1528-in-i386-chroot.html works fine though.

I'll update here when I've figured out why the compiled libraries don't get included.

It's similar to what is mentioned in these bug reports:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/35189
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/35190
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/35191

There's a fix here: http://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=44422

---

Original post:
While it'd be absolutely fair to accuse me of recycling posts, I have a reasonably good reason for doing so: posting build instructions for the latest version -- even if identical to instructions for earlier versions -- confirms that it 'works'. Also, it shows that the instructions are current.

I'm too much of a hoarder to go back and update old posts.

Anyway, here's a generic way of building wine which works for 1.5.30 (and 1.5.28 and everything in between). And yes, I've copy/pasted from my old 1.5.28 post...

See here for information about 3D acceleration using libGL/U: http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/429-briefly-wine-libglliubglu-blender.html

Getting started:
If you set up a chroot to build 1.5.28 before, you don't need to set up a new chroot to build 1.5.30. In that case, skip the set-up step below and instead re-enter your existing chroot like this:

sudo mount -o bind /proc wine32/proc
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf wine32/etc/resolv.conf
sudo chroot wine32
su sandbox

cd ~/tmp

Setting up the Chroot

sudo apt-get install debootstrap
mkdir $HOME/tmp/architectures/wine32 -p
cd $HOME/tmp/architectures
sudo debootstrap --arch i386 wheezy $HOME/tmp/architectures/wine32 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/
sudo mount -o bind /proc wine32/proc
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf wine32/etc/resolv.conf
sudo chroot wine32

You're now in the chroot:

apt-get update
apt-get install locales sudo vim
echo 'export LC_ALL="C"'>>/etc/bash.bashrc
echo 'export LANG="C"'>>/etc/bash.bashrc
echo '127.0.0.1 localhost beryllium' >> /etc/hosts
source /etc/bash.bashrc
adduser sandbox
usermod -g sudo sandbox
echo 'Defaults !tty_tickets' >> /etc/sudoers
su sandbox
cd ~/

Replace 'beryllium' with the name your host system (it's just to suppress error messages)

---

Building Wine
While still in the chroot, continue (the i386 is ok; don't worry about it -- you don't actually need it):

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev:i386 libfreetype6-dev:i386 libxcursor-dev:i386 libxi-dev:i386 libxxf86vm-dev:i386 libxrandr-dev:i386 libxinerama-dev:i386 libxcomposite-dev:i386 libglu-dev:i386 libosmesa-dev:i386 libglu-dev:i386 libosmesa-dev:i386 libdbus-1-dev:i386 libgnutls-dev:i386 libncurses-dev:i386 libsane-dev:i386 libv4l-dev:i386 libgphoto2-2-dev:i386 liblcms-dev:i386 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev:i386 libcapi20-dev:i386 libcups2-dev:i386 libfontconfig-dev:i386 libgsm1-dev:i386 libtiff-dev:i386 libpng-dev:i386 libjpeg-dev:i386 libmpg123-dev:i386 libopenal-dev:i386 libldap-dev:i386 libxrender-dev:i386 libxml2-dev:i386 libxslt-dev:i386 libhal-dev:i386 gettext:i386 prelink:i386 bzip2:i386 bison:i386 flex:i386 oss4-dev:i386 checkinstall:i386 ocl-icd-libopencl1:i386 opencl-headers:i386 libasound2-dev:i386 build-essential

mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.5.30.tar.bz2
tar xvf wine-1.5.30.tar.bz2
cd wine-1.5.30/
wget http://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=44422 -O diff.patch
patch -p1 < diff .patch

patching file configure
patching file configure.ac
patching file libs/wine/Makefile.in

./configure
time make -j3
sudo checkinstall --install=no

checkinstall 1.6.2, Copyright 2009 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran
           This software is released under the GNU GPL.


The package documentation directory ./doc-pak does not exist. 
Should I create a default set of package docs?  [y]: 

Preparing package documentation...OK

Please write a description for the package.
End your description with an empty line or EOF.
>> wine 1.5.30-2
>> 

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

This package will be built according to these values: 

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@beryllium ]
1 -  Summary: [ wine 1.5.30-2 ]
2 -  Name:    [ wine ]
3 -  Version: [ 1.5.30-2 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ i386 ]
8 -  Source location: [ wine-1.5.30 ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]
11 - Provides: [ wine ]
12 - Conflicts: [  ]
13 - Replaces: [  ]

Compilation took ca 13 minutes with three threads. Checkinstall takes a little while (In particular this step: 'Copying files to the temporary directory...').

---

Installing Wine

Exit the chroot

sandbox@beryllium:~/tmp/wine-1.5.30$ exit
exit
root@beryllium:/# exit
exit
me@beryllium:~/tmp/architectures$ 

On your host system
 Enable multiarch* and install ia32-libs, since you've built a proper 32 bit binary:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

*At some point I think ia32-libs may be replaced by proper multiarch packages, but maybe not. So we're kind of doing both here.

 Copy the .deb package and install it

sudo cp wine32/home/sandbox/tmp/wine-1.5.30/wine_1.5.30-1_i386.deb .
sudo chown $USER wine_1.5.30-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i wine_1.5.30-1_i386.deb

---