Optimizing Linux

for Your Processor

or How to Double Your Computers Performance

by Frank Kruchio[New Zealand]

Konstantin Malakhanov[Germany]
Steve Martin[New Zealand]
Version: February 2, 2002
 2

Copyright c 2000 Frank Kruchio and all the contributers to this tutorial. All
rights reserved. This document is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this document; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass
Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
CONTENTS 3

Contents
1 Introduction 4
1.1 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 What do I need to get started ? 5

2.1 Installing autoconf and automake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Optimization for Athlon and Pentium 6

3.1 Using the gcc/g++ optimization flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2 Remark on the rpmrc location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3 Important Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.1 Can I install i386 RPMs later ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.2 What is BuildRoot ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4 Optimizing QT for KDE 10

4.1 Getting the source RPM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2 What if my compilation fails ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

5 Optimizing KDE 12
5.1 Optimizing KDE in the correct order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

6 Optimizing XFree86 13
6.1 Faster GUI for gamers and all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

7 Appendix 14
7.1 About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.2 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.3 Useful resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1 INTRODUCTION 4

1 Introduction
Before you read any further, please make sure you have the latest version of
this tutorial. The latest version can be downloaded from:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/frankkru/page2.html
my website.

1.1 Getting Started

Should you take this tutorial ? If you are interested in getting the maximum
speed and efficiency out of your computer and do not mind learning new
things you may find this tutorial useful.

The availability of free source code under Linux allows the end user to
optimize software for a specific processor architecture. Once the exclusive do-
main of Linux gurus, today Linux optimization is easy for Linux users around
the world. Linux is fast: but most Linux users I have come across almost
never spend time on optimizing their Linux distribution of choice. Indeed
the benefits are immediately noticeable and it provides a user experience and
performance that no windows user can enjoy on the same hardware. While
Linux distributions such as Slackware and Debian are common, this tutorial
will focus only on the Red Hat Package Manager(RPM) based distributions
such as SuSE, Red Hat and Mandrake... for the following reasons.

• People using Slackware and Debian are generally considered seasoned

Linux users who know how optimizations are done.

• This tutorial is focusing on new Linux users: as such, they are more
likely to use an RPM based distribution when they start out with Linux.

Thanks to RPM, users new to Linux can easily optimize Linux for their
own processor architecture taking full advantage of their hardware. Distri-
butions such as Red Hat are only compiled for i386, Suse i486 and even
Mandrake only comes as i586. This leaves plenty of headroom to optimize
your favorite Linux distribution for Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon MP,
Pentium II/III/IV and Celeron. While my example is focusing on optimizing
workstation packages there is nothing holding you back to optimize a Linux
server, firewall, router or any other Linux box.
2 WHAT DO I NEED TO GET STARTED ? 5

2 What do I need to get started ?

2.1 Installing autoconf and automake
I will be using SuSE Linux 7.3 Professional on kernel 2.4.17 but all commands
should work on any of the RPM based distributions out there. Before you be-
gin, you will need to install two packages, one called autoconf and the other
is automake. Check your Linux CD or download autoconf and automake
from the ftp site/website of your distribution vendor in case they are not
already installed on your hard drive. To install autoconf and automake, log
in as root and find the directory where the autoconf.rpm and automake.rpm
is located.

Now, run RPM as:

rpm -Uvh *.rpm

to install both packages (SuSE users can use yast → package management
→ install packages → directory).

After installation, you can confirm from a shell that installation was success-
ful:

frank@babe:~> rpm -q autoconf automake

autoconf-2.52-44
automake-1.4_p5-44

If RPM reports the version number you successfully installed the required
packages, now you are ready to move onto the next step.

NOTE:
If you would like to learn how the tools autoconf and automake work, you
can visit the
http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook toc.html
website online book on the subject.
3 OPTIMIZATION FOR ATHLON AND PENTIUM 6

3 Optimization for Athlon and Pentium

3.1 Using the gcc/g++ optimization flags
RPM will consult a file in your home directory called .rpmrc during the
optimization process. We need to create a new ∼/.rpmrc file in case you can
not find one in your home directory. Simply open your favorite text editor
and enter the following lines; feel free to copy and paste the rpmrc file below.
Make sure the name of the file you save in your home directory is .rpmrc,
note the dot. Place the flags in the .rpmrc file on one line where it says
optflags:, RPM complains if you do not place them on one line or just use
line breaks.

3.2 Remark on the rpmrc location

Instead of customizing ∼/.rpmrc file you can also put the same lines as root
in /etc/rpmrc. The difference is that /etc/rpmrc will be used for all users,
while ∼/.rpmrc values are only for you. One advantage of having a ∼/.rpmrc
file is that you do not need to back it up if you will do a fresh install of your
favorite Linux distribution. Assumed that you put your home directories and
/etc in the different partitions. your home directory will be untouched. The
global RPM configuration file /etc/rpmrc is deleted during a new installation.

# -------------------- cut here --------------------

# 2001/12/23, modified by
# Frank Kruchio [New Zealand]
# Konstantin Malakhanov [Germany]
# Any per-system configuration should be added to /etc/rpmrc
# while per-user configuration should be added to ~/.rpmrc
#
#############################################################
# Values for the gcc/g++ compiler, Add these flags on 1 line !
# -mcpu=i686 is redundant
# add -malign-functions=4 -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 for Athlon
############################################################
optflags: i686 -O3 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer \
-funroll-loops -fforce-mem -fforce-addr \
-fexpensive-optimizations

#############################################################
# Canonical arch names and numbers
3 OPTIMIZATION FOR ATHLON AND PENTIUM 7

arch_canon: i686: i686 1

#############################################################
# Canonical OS names and numbers
os_canon: Linux: Linux 1

#############################################################
# For a given uname().machine, the default build architecture
buildarchtranslate: i686: i686

#############################################################
# Architecture compatibility
arch_compat: i686: i686

buildarch_compat: i686: i686

# -------------------- cut here --------------------

If you have an Athlon, Duron, Pentium/II/III/IV or Celeron use the

above file as it is.
For Athlons and Durons with GCC 3.0 or newer use:

optflags: athlon -O3 -march=athlon \

-funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-mem \
-fforce-addr -finline-functions -malign-functions=4 \
-mpreferred-stack-boundary=2

and replace i686 with the word athlon everywhere in the file.

If you have an AMD K6-II or K6-III, replace i686 with the word i586
everywhere in the file. Both the K6-II and K6-III can execute MMX instruc-
tions. See:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

and see the entries under the CPU flags.

The /etc/rpmrc file above is just a short version of /usr/lib/rpmrc mod-

ified by me for my Athlon XP 1600+ processor. Here, you tell RPM what
optimization flags you want to use for your processor. For detailed explana-
tion on what they do, see man gcc OPTIMIZATION OPTIONS starting at
line 960. The -O3 flag is the highest gcc/g++ optimization flag, the compiler
will accept higher settings such as -O9 but it will only use -O3. There are
3 OPTIMIZATION FOR ATHLON AND PENTIUM 8

other optimization flags such as -ffast-math but I recommend you read the
manual on gcc 1 before applying them. In fact this is all I use on my Athlon
XP 1600+ model 662 for maximum stability:

optflags: i686 -O2 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer \

-malign-functions=4 -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2

3.3 Important Notes

3.3.1 Can I install i386 RPMs later ?
Please note that after you created ∼/.rpmrc you can still install lower say
i386 optimized binary or source rpms but you may need to call rpm as:

rpm --target=i386 ...

3.3.2 What is BuildRoot ?

Beware of RPMs without BuildRoot specification! What exactly is that
BuildRoot? Please visit ‘Maximum RPM’ here for more details.

“The build root is not the root directory under which the software
is built. Rather, it is the root directory for the install phase of
the build. When a build root is not specified, the software being
packaged is installed relative to the build system’s root directory.”

Usually, well-specified RPMs always declare BuildRoot. A BuildRoot

aware RPM can make two difficult situations much easier:

1. Performing a build without impacting the build system.

2. Allowing non-root users to build packages.

Let’s study the first situation in a bit more detail. Say, for example, that
sendmail is to be packaged. In the course of creating a sendmail package,
the software must be installed. This would mean that critical sendmail files,
such as sendmail.cf and aliases, would be overwritten. Mail handling on the
build system would almost certainly be disrupted. In other words, simply
building a new version RPM without BuildRoot will silently overwrite files
of the installed RPM.

1
Run the command man gcc in a shell.
3 OPTIMIZATION FOR ATHLON AND PENTIUM 9

The second situation is not so important for a stand-alone workstation.

But if you care about security, you will try to do whatever is possible without
using root account. But it is not enough for RPM to declare BuildRoot. The
build specifications inside of RPM must be slightly modified to take Build-
Root into account. So some lazy RPM packagers don’t care about BuildRoot
and you will get all the trouble.

So you try to build an RPM and it fails, because it cannot write in

/usr/bin or something like that. Then you know that RPM does not use
BuildRoot properly. How likely is that? Well, SuSE 6.4 had no BuildRoot
for 1174 RPMs out of 1316 supplied; SuSE 7.2 has 459 of 1260 RPMs without
BuildRoot. Things are getting better, but then, you still can catch one
without BuildRoot. The best you can do is to back up all important files
from the installed RPM, build the RPM as root and politely complain to
RPM packager.
4 OPTIMIZING QT FOR KDE 10

4 Optimizing QT for KDE

4.1 Getting the source RPM.
I would recommend you to start out optimizing with a small src.rpm file
program and when you see how it works you will realize that it is very easy
indeed. I will use here an example of qt for KDE but this can be applied to
any other program in src.rpm or filename.spm package.

1. Copy from your CD or download to any directory of your choice the

file qt-devel.rpm (a small 700kb file)

2. Install qt-devel.rpm (You may need to temporarily rename /etc/rpmrc

to /etc/rpmrcHOLD to do this)

3. Download qt-2.3.2-10.src.rpm (Or the latest QT .src.rpm, .spm pack-

age)

4. Start optimizing; after making sure you have /etc/rpmrc simply run
the following command:

rpm --rebuild qt-2.3.2-10.src.rpm

5. If you have no errors once the compilation finished you will find all the
optimized packages in one of the directories below, depending on what
architecture you set in your rpmrc file.

/usr/src/packages/RPMS/i586/
/usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/
/usr/src/packages/RPMS/athlon/

6. Just install your freshly optimized RPMs and enjoy the extra speed
they bring to your server or desktop computers. Of course if you have
more than one computer these optimized packages can be installed on
any other with a similar setup.

4.2 What if my compilation fails ?

If you run into problems be patient and try the followings. Install your source
rpm in this case qt-2.3.2-10.src.rpm and read the .spec file in /usr/src/packages/SPECS/.
The qt.spec file contains information on what needs to be installed for qt to
compile correctly. You can also start optimized package building with:
4 OPTIMIZING QT FOR KDE 11

rpm -bb /usr/src/packages/SPECS/qt.spec

The -bb option is invoked with one hyphen -bb only as opposed to two in
–rebuild.

By far the easiest way to check if you have all the required packages
installed is to open a shell and type ‘rpm -q ’, next open the qt.spec file,
copy and paste the required package names into the shell and press enter.
Quick and easy to check even 50 package names this way.
5 OPTIMIZING KDE 12

5 Optimizing KDE
5.1 Optimizing KDE in the correct order
I found that upgrading to a newer optimized KDE package to be very simple
given you are following these steps.

• Make sure you optimize and install QT first. See the Optimizing QT
for KDE section.

• Before you can start optimizing kdelibs for your own cpu, you will
need to download and install the kdelibs-devel.rpm package. Kdelibs-
devel.rpm contains libraries and header files that are used in the opti-
mization/compilation process. Optimize kdelibs. Just before installing
the optimized KDE libaries, log out from KDE to a console then install
the new libraries.

• Before rebuilding kdebase.src.rpm you will need to install kdebase-

devel, lesstif, lesstif-devel, pam-devel and flex. Optimize kdebase. In-
stall KDE base after you logged out from KDE.

• At this point you can optimize and install any of the other KDE pack-
ages in any order.

As an indication kdenetwork takes about 45 minutes to optimize, but

kdebase approximately takes two hours to optimize and build your new .rpm
package on a 400Mhz/128MB RAM PC. Linux is multitasking, therefore you
can browse the net, download or do whatever else on your PC while the
new packages are built for you. The end result is that KDE is much more
responsive and faster.
6 OPTIMIZING XFREE86 13

6 Optimizing XFree86
6.1 Faster GUI for gamers and all
If you are feeling ambitious to rebuild XFree86 from the xf86.src.rpm (some-
times just called xf86.spm) install xdevel, bison, libusb and glidesdk. Down-
load the rather large 45MB xf86.spm file containing the source code for
XFree86 and start optimizing as:

rpm --rebuild xf86.spm

Compilation times depend on your CPU / RAM and optimization flags.

Code optimization is a tradeoff between program speed and program size.
Higher optimization flags will increase compile time and the executable size.
XFree86 will approximately take two hours to optimize and build on a 400Mhz
128MB RAM PC. After installation of the new optimized XFree86 packages
is complete, you can check if you use your own optimized version with the
following command:

frank@babe:~ > rpm -qi xf86

Name : xf86 Relocations:
Version : 4.1.0 Vendor: (none)
Release : 63 Build Date: Mon 19 Nov 2001
Install date: Mon 19 Nov 2001 Build Host: babe.local
Group : X11/XFree86 Source RPM: xf86-4.1.0-63
Size : 30834111 License: 1994-2000
Summary : Basic X11 package
Description :
Contains XFree86 and some other programs from the ...
-------- modified here for brevity ---------

You can see from the output that the Build Host: babe.local (in my case)
is the local computer. Not a difficult process as you can see and thanks to
RPM you can run XFree86 at maximum speed now.

Note:If your build breakes, the rule applies here just like on earlier pages
to check in the specifications file /usr/src/packages/SPECS/xf86.spec the
dependencies to make sure you have all required components installed for a
successful build.
7 APPENDIX 14

7 Appendix
7.1 About the author
Frank Kruchio graduated in 2001 with a B.Sc. in Computer Science from
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Most of his spare time is
devoted learning about Linux and computers in general; but he also enjoys fly
fishing. You can contact the author at frank.kruchio@paradise.net.nz.

7.2 Feedback
As always there is room for improvement and this tutorial is no exception. If
you have any constructive ideas or comments you like to add or seen included
in the next version of this tutorial please feel free to e-mail your ideas. I look
forward to hearing from you!

7.3 Useful resources

• There is an Optimizing linux for Athlon tutorial at
http://aboutlinux.com/art k7opt1 a.html click here to visit the web-
site.

• Intel’s C/C++ compiler for Linux

http://www.intel.com/software/products/compilers/c50/linux/
click here to visit the Intel.

• Linux Performance tuning website

http://linuxperf.nl.linux.org/ click here to visit the website.
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Linux optimization February 2, 2002

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