diff --git a/chapter04/aboutsbus.xml b/chapter04/aboutsbus.xml index dccf59fe7..a442c20ab 100644 --- a/chapter04/aboutsbus.xml +++ b/chapter04/aboutsbus.xml @@ -26,9 +26,9 @@ unit of time. For example, consider a package whose compilation time is 4.5 - SBUs. This means that if your system took 10 minutes to compile and + SBUs. This means that if your system took 4 minutes to compile and install the first pass of binutils, it will take - approximately 45 minutes to build the example package. + approximately 18 minutes to build the example package. Fortunately, most build times are shorter than one SBU. SBUs are not entirely accurate because they depend on many @@ -36,6 +36,36 @@ to give an estimate of how long it might take to install a package, but the numbers can vary by as much as dozens of minutes in some cases. + On some newer systems, the motherboard is capable of contolling + the system clock speed. This can be controlled with a command such as + powerprofilesctl. This is not available in LFS, but + may be available on the host distro. After LFS is complete, it can be + added to a system with the procedures at the + + BLFS power-profiles-daemon page. + + Before measuring the build time of any package it is advisable to use a + system power profile set for maximum performance (and maximum power + consumption). + + Otherwise the measured SBU value may be inaccurate because the + system may react differently when building + or other packages. + + Be aware that a significant inaccuracy can still show up even if the same + profile is used for both packages because the system may respond slower if + the system is idle when starting the build procedure. Setting the power + profile to performance will minimize this problem. And + obviously doing so will also make the system build LFS faster. + + If powerprofilesctl is available, issue the + powerprofilesctl set performance command to select + the performance profile. Some distros provides the + tuned-adm command for managing the profiles instead of + powerprofilesctl, on these distros issue the + tuned-adm profile throughput-performance command to + select the throughput-performance profile. + When multiple processors are used in this way, the SBU units in the book will vary even more than they normally would. In some cases, the make @@ -44,10 +74,11 @@ interleaved. If you run into a problem with a build step, revert to a single processor build to properly analyze the error messages. - The times presented here are based upon using four cores (-j4). The + The times presented here for all packages + (except which is based on one core) + are based upon using four cores (-j4). The times in Chapter 8 also include the time to run the regression tests for the package unless specified otherwise. - diff --git a/chapter05/binutils-pass1.xml b/chapter05/binutils-pass1.xml index 39365477d..f6b7f0f90 100644 --- a/chapter05/binutils-pass1.xml +++ b/chapter05/binutils-pass1.xml @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ %general-entities; ]> - +