2.1. MRG Realtime Kernel Variants
There are numerous kernel variants provided. Each variant is simply a version of the MRG Realtime kernel compiled with support for different configuration options. In this case, the variants offer differing diagnostic capabilities. The set of kernels is separately provided for x86 (32-bit) and x86-64 (64-bit) systems. Select either set based on whether you intend to run in 32-bit or 64-bit mode.
The main deployment MRG Realtime kernel is identified below as Production. Additionally there are several debug kernels which have progressively more diagnostic code compiled in. The reason for doing this is that as the amount of debug code is increased, so does the overhead. kernel-rt-trace has less overhead than kernel-rt-debug.
Finally, the Vanilla kernel does not include the MRG Realtime features. This is used to help distinguish whether bugs were introduced in the MRG Realtime features, or are inherent bugs in the baseline kernel. See Section 4.1, “Reporting Bugs” for more information.
| Variant | Intended Usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
x86 (kernel-rt)
|
Production - Standard 32-bit production realtime kernel | x86 version with Physical Address Extension (PAE) enabled to allow for up to 16GB memory |
x86 tracing (kernel-rt-trace)
|
Debugging - 32-bit trace kernel | Latency tracer enabled - Used to locate latency hotspots |
x86 debug (kernel-rt-debug)
|
Debugging - 32-bit debugging kernel | Includes debugging options, with latency tracer disabled - Used to debug MRG Realtime kernel failures |
x86 vanilla (kernel-rt-vanilla)
|
Debugging - 32-bit base kernel | No MRG Realtime features, used for comparison |
| Variant | Intended Usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
x86_64 (kernel-rt)
|
Production - Standard 64-bit production kernel | |
x86_64 tracing (kernel-rt-tracing)
|
Debugging - 64-bit trace kernel | Latency tracer enabled - Used to locate latency hotspots |
x86_64 debug (kernel-rt-debug)
|
Debugging - 64-bit debugging kernel | Includes debugging options, with latency tracer disabled - Used to debug MRG Realtime kernel failures |
x86_64 vanilla (kernel-rt-vanilla)
|
Debugging - 64-bit base kernel | No MRG Realtime features, used for comparison |