Should I install the ksmtuned package available in the apt repo?

[Taylor Murphy]

I noticed that I have the ability to download ksmtuned from the apt repo (it says that it is not installed on all 3 of my nodes) and that it plays a large part in balancing memory usage between VMs, but it also seems like I have config files for KSM and that ballooning/memory sharing is working regardless. Does proxmox have a proprietary version of ksmtuned that is not accessible in the repo or am I missing something? Will installing ksmtuned with apt cause any issues/discrepancies or could it possibly improve performance/balance?

Output of pveversion -v:

proxmox-ve: 5.1-43 (running kernel: 4.13.16-2-pve)
pve-manager: 5.1-52 (running version: 5.1-52/ba597a64)
pve-kernel-4.13: 5.1-44
pve-kernel-4.15: 5.1-3
pve-kernel-4.15.15-1-pve: 4.15.15-6
pve-kernel-4.13.16-2-pve: 4.13.16-47
pve-kernel-4.13.16-1-pve: 4.13.16-46
pve-kernel-4.13.13-2-pve: 4.13.13-33
corosync: 2.4.2-pve5
criu: 2.11.1-1~bpo90
glusterfs-client: 3.8.8-1
ksm-control-daemon: 1.2-2
libjs-extjs: 6.0.1-2
libpve-access-control: 5.0-8
libpve-apiclient-perl: 2.0-4
libpve-common-perl: 5.0-30
libpve-guest-common-perl: 2.0-15
libpve-http-server-perl: 2.0-8
libpve-storage-perl: 5.0-19
libqb0: 1.0.1-1
lvm2: 2.02.168-pve6
lxc-pve: 3.0.0-2
lxcfs: 3.0.0-1
novnc-pve: 0.6-4
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 1.0-15
pve-cluster: 5.0-26
pve-container: 2.0-22
pve-docs: 5.1-17
pve-firewall: 3.0-8
pve-firmware: 2.0-4
pve-ha-manager: 2.0-5
pve-i18n: 1.0-4
pve-libspice-server1: 0.12.8-3
pve-qemu-kvm: 2.11.1-5
pve-xtermjs: 1.0-3
pve-zsync: 1.6-15
qemu-server: 5.0-25
smartmontools: 6.5+svn4324-1
spiceterm: 3.0-5
vncterm: 1.5-3
zfsutils-linux: 0.7.7-pve1~bpo9

I also just noticed while looking at this that I have ksm-control-daemon installed. Does this function completely independently of ksmtuned or do they cooperate?​

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

Does proxmox have a proprietary version of ksmtuned that is not accessible in the repo or am I missing something?

We have our own ksm-control-daemon package but it is open-source like all other parts of PVE.
This package must conflict with the Debian one because you can't have tow running.

 

[RolandK]

may i ask why proxmox has it's own/extra maintained ksmtuned version/package ?

i tried to find that out by searching google and this forum, but i could not find any reference.

there is also this open ticket for a while:

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2635

why is proxmox using vsz instead of rss for making tuning decision ?

imho, this is wrong.

furthermore, ksmtune does not seem to take arc size into account

there was a patch at https://lists.proxmox.com/pipermail/pve-devel/2021-January/046739.html which did get no further notice