[Asterisk-Users] Tuning the Linux kernel?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 17:48, Scott Stingel wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com 
> > [mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
> > Steven Critchfield
> > Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 9:41 PM
> > To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Tuning the Linux kernel?
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 13:03, Scott Stingel wrote:
> > > Hi all-
> > > 
> > > It's often mentioned here that recompiling the Linux kernel 
> > may improve the
> > > performance of asterisk.
> > > 
> > > My question is:  Does re-compiling the kernel have any 
> > effect if there are
> > > no changes to the configuration?
> > > 
> > > What parameters will typically improve performance?  
> > > 
> > > Thanks for any insight!
> > 
> > Reduce unnecessary modules and drivers being built in. The 
> > kernel is not
> > able to swap itself out of memory and therefore the smaller 
> > footprint it
> > has the better.
> > 
> > Make sure to select and optimize for your CPU. 
> > 
> > There are a few others you can find from the menuconfig help system. 
> > 
> > Another trick to look into is cutting down of the asterisk 
> > modules that
> > are loaded. Our newly deployed asterisk machine is not going to do any
> > IVR, and is only going to do IAX2 traffic. Because of this I 
> > was able to
> > trim down a lot of the modules being loaded by asterisk and decrease
> > it's memory footprint. 
> > 
> > This also seems to reduce startup time, as well as stripping down all
> > unused sections of the configs.
> > 
> > I know this isn't always practical for all people to do, but we wanted
> > to squeeze as much as we could out of this machine. 
> > -- 
> > Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>
> > 
> 
> Ok thanks.  Following up on your suggestion to remove unnecessary asterisk
> modules,
> are there any that come to mind that consume CPU horsepower when not in use?
> 
> Or is it just a memory issue?  
> 
> My scenario (for my current customers anyway) is the opposite of yours - I'm
> doing IVR only!

I think he only one that takes up CPU time with out necessarily being
active is the one that watches over /var/spool/asterisk/outgoing. This
shouldn't even be much either as it is just reading the directory. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>