Re: [gentoo-user] New PC hangs/lacks ?

On 05/06 02:47, Ashley Dixon wrote:
> On Wed, May 06, 2020 at 09:16:33AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >   It looks like blender is a heavy-duty program that bogs down your
> > system.  You could buy a new machine, or you could try the "nice"
> > command.  The tradeoff is that your system becomes more responsive
> > because the program is launched with a lower priority.  The usual
> > priority levels range from 20 (lowest priority for your program) to
> > -19 (highest priority for your program).  Note that you have to use
> > root or sudo to use negative nice-level (higher priority).
>
> Considering the specifications of Meino machine, this is not expected  behaviour
> from any application.  I doubt it is possible for a standard consumer to  buy  a
> machine with much better hardware; this  is  certainly  a  more  serious  issue,
> whether it be faulty hardware or misbehaving software.
>
> What else is running at the time of Blender locking up ? Are you absolutely sure
> that it is Blender causing this issue ?
>
> --
>
> Ashley Dixon
> suugaku.co.uk
>
> 2A9A 4117
> DA96 D18A
> 8A7B B0D2
> A30E BF25
> F290 A8AA
>

Hi Ashley! 

;)

Short explanation: With blender you can do animation.
For animations you need to "explain to Blender" how 
thing should move. This is done in the so called
"graph editor" which is - amthemtically spoken -
nothing more than a lot of X/Y graphs, where X
is identical to the current frame number - hence
the time axis - and Y is the amount of movement
in direction of one of the Ds in "3D".

Rendering is no problem (ok, the system "lacks"
a little, but that is expected since a lot of
calculation power is drawn).

But if I click into the graph editor to directly
jump to quite different frame than the previous
or next one, everything freezes.

Blender hast to end its calculations and THEN
everything goes back to normal.

In this time the CPU goes not in full load --
otherwise the fans would become very busy (as 
they do when starting rendering).

The problem here is not, that a sudden load is put
onto the system - that is normal and intended - the
problem is, that everyting locks up.

As said, it /feels/ like a lock on a system bus
or whatelse, what will only be released, when
the calculation for the frame jump has been
ended.

Since Linux is a multitasking and multithreading
OS and the PC has six cores and 12 threads, there
should be at least one thread left to handle the 
keyboard while calculating frames - IF the CPU
get the bus at all.

The example with the bus being locked is AN EXAMPLE
ONLY. I have no clue, whether something gets locked
at all and if so, what gets locked.

There is "nothing" else running except for the
usual daemons, the kernel, openbox, a shell, a terminal.
Or with other words: Nothing stressful.

And I /think/ (read: I don't know), I could have something 
to do with the communication with the GPU...:
If I switch of the preview, there are no locks anymore.

And I think my PC is causing the problem (instead of blender)
since the problem arises with three different versions
of blender.
Blender is used quite often, my PC is a combination, which
is used quite often and I didn't find anything (including
the bugtracker of the Blender development), which could
point me to the root of that problem.

On the other hand: I included the gpu-related USE flags
into make.conf and recompiled all related software.
Chances are there, that I would have triggered the problem
with another application if this problem is caused by
a bogus hardware (includind me screwing up some awkward
BIOS setting).

I am NOT overclocking and I am using "stock settings" in the
BIOS (beside the XMP settings for the RAM - but those are
settings quaranteed to work by the vendor of the RAM).

If any reader of the "Book of possible bogus hardware" is
now that confused as I am - you are welcome ! :)

Cheers!
Meino