OS Builder/Run on XO hardware/Experiences

Some sample experiences showing the performance of olpc-os-builder on XO hardware.

2014-06-17, XO-4, 2GB RAM, 4GB SWAP, 500GB USB HDD, 13.2.0

Our official builds of 13.2.1 for XO-1.75 and XO-4, complete, with signing, took 77 minutes each on the OLPC builder. Since then all our 13.2.x builds were completed on the same hardware configuration.

Configuration files:

* olpc-os-13.2.1-xo1.75.ini
* olpc-os-13.2.1-xo4.ini

Performance tweaks:

• a warm file cache (timing of a subsequent run, not an initial run),

2013-12-11, XO-4, 1GB RAM, 1GB SWAP, 294GB USB HDD, 13.2.0

The build took 49 minutes.

Configuration file: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/File:Olpc-os-13.2.0-xo4.ini

Hardware performance measurements:

• internal eMMC, sequential read, 32 MB/s, (operating system),
• USB HDD, sequential read, 28 MB/s, (osbuilder filesystem),
• external SD, sequential read, 9.45 MB/s, (swap),

Performance tweaks:

• make_tree_tarball=0
• a warm file cache (timing of a subsequent run, not an initial run), called with --cache-only flag

2013-07-29, XO-4, 2GB RAM, 4GB SWAP, 500GB USB HDD, 13.2.0

Build took 31 minutes.

# time ./osbuilder.py examples/olpc-os-13.2.0-xo4.ini
...
real    30m55.275s
user    12m42.790s
sys     2m8.370s

Configuration file: http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/z/1V3fiW.txt

Hardware performance measurements:

• internal eMMC, sequential read, 49 MiB/s, (operating system),
• internal eMMC, filesystem write, 13.7 MiB/s,
• USB HDD, sequential read, 27 MiB/s, (osbuilder filesystem),
• USB HDD, filesystem write, 27 MiB/s,
• external SD, sequential read, 15 MiB/s, (swap),

Performance tweaks:

• versioned_fs=0
• make_tree_tarball=0
• no sugar
• a warm file cache (timing of a subsequent run, not an initial run)

2013-07-30, XO-1.75, 1GB RAM, no SWAP, 500GB USB HDD, 13.2.0

Build took 43 minutes.

# time ./osbuilder.py examples/olpc-os-13.2.0-xo1.75.ini
...
real    43m13.025s
user    23m44.010s
sys     4m17.620s

Configuration file: http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/z/1V3xjq.txt

Hardware performance measurements:

• internal eMMC, sequential read, 27.8 MiB/s, (operating system),
• internal eMMC, filesystem write, 7.38 MiB/s,
• USB HDD, sequential read, 27.5 MiB/s, (osbuilder filesystem),
• USB HDD, filesystem write, 27 MiB/s,

Performance tweaks:

• versioned_fs=0
• make_tree_tarball=0
• no sugar
• a warm file cache (timing of a subsequent run, not an initial run)

2013-07-30, XO-1.5, 1GB RAM, no SWAP, 500GB USB HDD, 13.2.0

Build took 39 minutes.

# time ./osbuilder.py examples/olpc-os-13.2.0-xo4.ini
...
real    38m50.632s
user    21m16.550s
sys     2m58.560s

Configuration file: http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/z/1V3vxy.txt

Hardware performance measurements:

• internal microSD, sequential read, 18.2 MiB/s, (operating system),
• internal microSD, filesystem write, 6.23 MiB/s,
• USB HDD, sequential read, 32 MiB/s, (osbuilder filesystem),
• USB HDD, filesystem write, 29.4 MiB/s,

Performance tweaks:

• versioned_fs=0
• make_tree_tarball=0
• no sugar
• a warm file cache (timing of a subsequent run, not an initial run)