Linux Performance Tuning

Learn Linux performance tuning. Discover how to determine bottlenecks, find resource usage information, and improve the performance of Linux systems.

Introduction

• Welcome
• What you should know

1. Performance Overview

• What do we mean by performance?
• Timing techniques
• Timing techniques solution
• The proc filesystem
• Packages for performance
• Performance Co-Pilot and Tuna
• SystemTap and Berkeley Packet Filter

2. CPU Bottlenecks

• top for CPU usage
• sar for CPU
• /proc/cpuinfo
• Scheduling: nice, priorities, and process classes
• Throughput vs. response time
• The Linux kernel and responsiveness

3. Memory Bottlenecks

• What is a memory leak?
• /proc/meminfo, free, and swap space
• top and htop for memory usage
• CPU caches and page caches
• Page sizes and page faults
• Challenge: Finding memory bottlenecks
• Solution: Finding memory bottlenecks

4. Disk Bottlenecks

• Hard disks and SSD behavior
• sar and atop tools and disk utilization
• Filesystem types and performance
• Challenge: Disk bottlenecks
• Solution: Disk bottlenecks

Conclusion

• Next steps