Hardware/software Tip to limit CPU usage per appl

ThreadMaster monitors all running applications, and detects when a application starts to use excessive processor resources. It dynamically hunt down the offending thread, and clamp the CPU for this thread. This feature ensures that other users can remain working without noticing anything. The clamped process will eventually finish, and the clamp will be removed automatically. ThreadMaster is a background service implementing a CPU Quota mechanism on top of the standard thread scheduling algorithms of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Operating Systems. Administration of ThreadMaster is extremely simple, the behavior is in general, controlled by only two key parameters. The first parameter instructs ThreadMaster to monitor application activity over a given of time. The second parameter is the allowed max. average CPU utilization for the process over the defined time. Note, please look the readme.txt before installing, so you can tweak as you like. BES is a small tool which limits the CPU usage for a specified process: for instance, you can limit the CPU usage of a process which would use CPU 100%, down to 50% (or any percentage you like). With this, you can use other programs comfortably while doing something CPU-intensive in the background. By limiting the CPU load, you can also cool down your CPU immediately when it happens to get too hot. Of course the processing speed will slow down proportionally if you limit the CPU usage, but it should be much better than crashing because of heat or (in the worst scenario) having your computer broken with a burned CPU. Furthermore, BES can hide any windows you don't want to be seen for some reason, without killing the process, and restore the hidden windows again anytime you like. Note, same purpose, but with GUI & maybe some extras. Hope is use-full, locally using ThreadMaster with no issues. Please read carefully, and remember to exclude some applications which may need 100% utilization, for others we will have to find our sweet-spot depending of the system CPU capacities. In our setup Rambus uses a limit of 50% after ThreadMaster is limiting (in case it wants all), and WinLogon.exe is not excluded, due to past issues. Choose wisely & have free fun. OS requirements are 2000/XP.

Hardware/software XP tweak for core gamers --- software tips

If you are a hard core gamer then the tweak below is for you. Below are a list of windows services that are recommended you change to the manual setting.

Routing and Remote Access
Alerter
Application Layer Gateway Service** (only if firewll is not used)
Application Management
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
ClipBook
COM+ System Application
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Help and Support
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service** (only if do you not use the cd-rw xp record suport)
IPSEC Services
Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
NT LM Security Support Provider
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Server
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
SSDP Discovery Service
System Restore Service
Telnet
Themes
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter
Fast User Switching Compatibility ** (only if fast user shiching is not used or the machine have one user only)
Protected Storage
Windows Time
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler ** (only if the pc do not have or use a printer)
Indexing Service
Error Reporting Service
Computer Browser
Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)

Hardware/software Mounting an ISO image

Sometimes, you may want to read the content of an iso image, or retrieve a specific file from that image, but you cannot or do not want to burn a CD.
It is still possible : you may mount an iso image, exactly like you would do for any peripheral !

The command to use, as root, is :

Code:

mount -o loop -t iso9660

Of course, the mount point must exist (I have created a /mnt/iso folder for that purpose, using mkdir).

Hardware/software tricks --- speed up boot times

Disclaimer: I'm just passing on something interesting which works for me. Don't blame me if your box melts down....

Trawling slashdot recently I found reference to a way to speed up boot times dramatically, by forcing services to start in parallel rather than one at a time.

This method is definitely in the "quick and dirty" category but works provided that none of your services depend on each other to start.

Basically all that is required is to edit /etc/rc, by adding an & after $i start

Code:

if egrep -q "(daemon |action |success |failure )" $i 2>/dev/null \ || [ "$subsys" = "single" -o "$subsys" = "local" ]; then $i start & else

On my mdk 10.1 box which is not running any servers (web server, mail server etc), it probably shaves a good 30 seconds off boot time.

Command line prompts --- UNIX

You can see all the programs that are running by using something like:



$ ps -axww



or some other monitoring tools.



But most of the Mandrake tools are available as drak*, so log in as root on the console, and type:



# drak[TAB]



to see them.



There are a few exceptions, such as XFdrake, printerdrake etc.



Note that in 9.2, a lot of the tools are much more advanced (such as printerdrake and userdrake), and can\'t run in a console any more.



For software installation, rpmdrake is basically a GUI version of urpmi.

Software Tips --Remove MBR

If you want to erase MBR in a fdisk /mbr fashion, you should issue this command as root:

dd if=/usr/lib/extipl/aldebaran.bin of=/dev/block_device_file

lilo -v

and voila!


aldebaran.bin is part of package extipl