Fedora 8 "Test" versus Fedora 8 "Release" Performance

sdonham · #1 29th November 2007, 06:53 AM

I have two identical machine, with the exact same hardware. One is running a fully updated version of Fedora 8 Test installed a few months ago, the other is running the official Fedora 8 Release, also fully updated, installed about 1 week ago.

What confuses me, is that the "Release" version of Fedora 8 is, without any doubt, MUCH faster than the machine running the "Test" release. Initially, I just assumed the machine running the "Test" release was slow due to less-than-ideal hardware specs (512 Megs RAM, 1.2GHz processor). However, after installing the "Release" version on another machine with the same hardware, I realized the hardware specs were more than adequate (the "Release" version is blazingly fast).

Does the "Test" version have a lot of debugging code enabled with more verbose logging? Enough to make it slow to crawl? Whereas, the "Release" version has all the debugging code switched off? I've checked the logs, they look about the same, but that doesn't mean the "Test" release isn't running with debug flags compiled in. It's such an obvious difference, that I'm tempted to install the release version on the other machine (but would rather not).

Just curious,
-sam

sdonham · #2 29th November 2007, 06:58 AM

I should add, that the kernels are exactly the same. I modified the kernel myself to suit my hardware by downloading the latest kernel source on both machines at the same time and used the same Makefile (copied from one machine to the other). They are the same kernel which leads me to believe its the applications themselves that might have some debugging switches compiled into the "Test" release of Fedora 8. Any ideas?
-sam

Kirurgs · #3 29th November 2007, 08:26 AM

You probably didn't notice, but in test releases Fedora dev. say that tests will be generally slower, and yes, it seems to be because of a debug thing...

sdonham · #4 29th November 2007, 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirurgs

You probably didn't notice, but in test releases Fedora dev. say that tests will be generally slower, and yes, it seems to be because of a debug thing...

Thanks, that's exactly what I suspected and the answer I was looking for! I just didn't expect performance to be 3-4X slower on the test release. Thanks again,
-sam