Questions about fsync (in the context of playing games)

General system Gaming
#1

Lutris tells me that fsync can improve my performance by making my game use multiple cores, but it needs a patched kernel. What does ‘patched’ mean here? Is it an option I can enable in the kernel config before compiling?

#2

Here’s quick tl;dr from my Linux gaming guide:

  1. It’s not universal improvement, depending on a game it may vary, but generally speaking very modern multi-core capable games can benefit significantly.

  2. You’d need Kernel ready for Fsync, in case of Arch it’s:

  3. To enable Fsync you also need a special version of Wine capable of that:

    • TKG :frog:
    • Manually patched Wine build

  4. Finally you can just enable it in Lutris if all conditions met :upside_down_face:

    Select game, Right :mouse: Button -> Configure

    Runner options tab:

    :white_check_mark: Enable Fsync - same as Esync, should be better, but Engine and Kernel must support it!
    Lutris will alert you if it’s not supported by Engine in use :space_invader:

Also i think you need to disable Esync then, coz they effectively cancel each other and Fsync is more performant, but little less compatible for now

Is Endeavour OS for me?
#3

Since the zen kernel has the patches, I guess I would like to use that (I would also like to learn how to apply patches myself, but that’s a bit more complicated I guess*). However, I also want to change some kernel options before compiling, so I can’t just install the binary linux-zen package from the repos. What I want to do here is basically follow the methods instructed here (or, if that won’t do, here), except with the zen kernel. How would I go about doing that?

In the case of compiling a kernel traditionally, the wiki says that I need a tar.xz file, but I could not find such a file in the official zen repo? So how would I go about doing this?

One Idea I had was to edit the PKGBUILD of the linux-lqx kernel (which has fsync support, right?) so that I’ll be able to use make nconfig before compiling, but how do I actually edit the PKGBUILD that way?

*So according to the first wiki page in this comment, applying patches yourself should be as simple as copying a patch file into the build directory. However, the fsync patch can’t be found anywhere.

Edit: So I viewed the PKGBUILD for linux-lqx and it starts like this:

# Maintainer: Piotr Gorski <lucjan.lucjanov@gmail.com> PGP-Key: BDB26C5A
# Contributor: shivik <> PGP-Key: 761E423C
# Contributor: Michael Duell <mail@akurei.me> PGP-Key: 6EE23EBE
# A special thanks to Steven Barrett for very important suggestions
# Contributor: Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <jan.steffens@gmail.com>
# Contributor: Tobias Powalowski <tpowa@archlinux.org>
# Contributor: Thomas Baechler <thomas@archlinux.org>

### BUILD OPTIONS
# Set these variables to ANYTHING that is not null to enable them

### Tweak kernel options prior to a build via nconfig
_makenconfig=

### Tweak kernel options prior to a build via menuconfig
_makemenuconfig=

### Tweak kernel options prior to a build via xconfig
_makexconfig=

....
....

So am I supposed to just remove the underscore on line 13 and be done with it?

#4

The “traditional” kernel compilation method as described on Arch Wiki is good for educational purposes, but for a “real” kernel you will want to use PKGBUILDs so as to integrate it into the package management.

You add that exact command more or less at the end of the prepare() function.

You obviously have to add it to the source array and add the patch command (see the PM I sent you). EDIT: no need to add patch command, both linux and linux-lqx iterate through the source array.

No, you have to do as described above: set to a non-null value because of the check [[ -z $_makenconfig ]]

1 Like
#5

Let’s call the patch you linked fsync.patch (I can rename it, right?). All of this is just to clarify:
After asp update linux and asp export linux, and downloading the patch, my build directory should look like this:

└── linux
    ├── config
    ├── fsync.patch
    └── PKGBUILD

My source array should look like this:

 18 source=(
 19   "$_srcname::git+https://git.archlinux.org/linux.git?signed#tag
    =$_srctag"
 20   config         # the main kernel config file
 21   fsync.patch
 22 )

And as per your edit, my prepare() should remain unchanged, except the make nconfig at the end:

 34 prepare() {
 35   cd $_srcname
 36
 37   echo "Setting version..."
 38   scripts/setlocalversion --save-scmversion
 39   echo "-$pkgrel" > localversion.10-pkgrel
 40   echo "${pkgbase#linux}" > localversion.20-pkgname
 41
 42   local src
 43   for src in "${source[@]}"; do
 44     src="${src%%::*}"
 45     src="${src##*/}"
 46     [[ $src = *.patch ]] || continue
 47     echo "Applying patch $src..."
 48     patch -Np1 < "../$src"
 49   done
 50
 51   echo "Setting config..."
 52   cp ../config .config
 53   #make olddefconfig
 54      
 55   make nconfig
 56   make prepare
 57
 58   make -s kernelrelease > version
 59   echo "Prepared $pkgbase version $(<version)"
 60 }

So it’s ok if it’s _makenconfig=1?

#6

I don’t use asp so I cannot comment on that.
For all the rest, yes, it should work. Maybe put make nconfig after make prepare.
Just try it out.