4-core arm armv7-package-building configuration notes, on RPi4B (aarch64) and OrangePi+2ed (armv7), poudriere-devel based

This note's structure:

1st: Package-build time frame summaries.
     (But I note some hardware points that are repeated later as well.)

2nd: Configuration points common to both RPi4B and OrangePi+2ed contexts.

3rd: Configuration points unique to the RPi4B context.

4th: Configuration points unique to the OrangePi+2ed context.


1st: Package-build time Summaries follow.
(Note: the detail order of package builds is not the same.)
(Examples are visiable in these summaries.)


RPi4B: cortex-a72 (aarch64) with cortex-a7 (armv7) support, 2 GHz (overclocked), 8 GiBytes RAM, USB3
[00:25:32] [01] [00:13:33] Finished lang/perl5.36 | perl5-5.36.3_1: Success
[01:58:13] [02] [00:44:25] Finished devel/icu | icu-74.2,1: Success
[03:14:00] [02] [00:21:28] Finished lang/ruby31 | ruby-3.1.4_1,1: Success
[03:33:51] [01] [02:21:22] Finished devel/cmake-core | cmake-core-3.28.3: Success
[23:12:47] [02] [19:06:01] Finished lang/rust | rust-1.76.0: Success
[1D:00:14:46] [02] [00:55:46] Finished devel/binutils@native | binutils-2.40_5,1: Success
(Note: start of visible ordering differences:)
[1D:03:07:32] [02] [00:58:03] Finished devel/arm-none-eabi-gcc | arm-none-eabi-gcc-11.3.0_3: Success
[1D:03:42:09] [01] [1D:00:08:13] Finished devel/llvm18@default | llvm18-18.1.0.r3: Success
[1D:04:45:14] [02] [01:35:29] Finished lang/gcc13 | gcc13-13.2.0_4: Success
[1D:05:21:43] [01] [01:39:13] Finished devel/boost-libs | boost-libs-1.84.0: Success
[1D:05:43:24] [01] [00:21:33] Finished textproc/source-highlight | source-highlight-3.1.9_9: Success
[1D:05:47:01] [02] [00:44:22] Finished devel/aarch64-none-elf-gcc | aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.0_3: Success
[1D:07:23:25] [02] [01:21:04] Finished devel/gdb@py39 | gdb-14.1_2: Success
[1D:07:58:37] [01] [01:19:55] Finished devel/freebsd-gcc13@armv7 | armv7-gcc13-13.2.0_1: Success
[1D:07:58:43] Stopping 2 builders
[main-CA7-default] [2024-03-11_15h30m14s] [committing] Queued: 265 Built: 265 Failed: 0   Skipped: 0   Ignored: 0   Fetched: 0   Tobuild: 0    Time: 1D:07:58:46

Note: 4364Mi MaxObs(Act+Wir+Lndry+SwapUsed) ("MaxObs":  short for "Maximum Observed")
Note: SwapUsed maximum: 0 (none used).

So, for an 8 GiByte RAM RPI4B, RAM+SWAP configured to be 38 GiBytes or so:
Estmate: 38.0 GiBytes/4.3 GiBytes approx.== 8.8
Result: Lots of margin for builds that use more RAM+SWAP.

So, for an 4 GiByte RAM RPI4B, RAM+SWAP configured to be 18 GiBytes or so:
Estimate: 18.0 GiBytes/4.3 GiBytes approx.== 4.1
Result: Also lots of margin for builds that use more RAM+SWAP.


OrangePi+2ed: cortex-a7 armv7, 1GHz, 4 cores, 2 GiBytes RAM, USB2:
[01:51:31] [01] [01:00:07] Finished lang/perl5.36 | perl5-5.36.3_1: Success
[08:55:35] [02] [03:08:09] Finished devel/icu | icu-74.2,1: Success
[13:17:38] [02] [01:28:32] Finished lang/ruby31 | ruby-3.1.4_1,1: Success
[14:17:44] [01] [09:20:55] Finished devel/cmake-core | cmake-core-3.28.3: Success
[4D:01:03:43] [02] [3D:08:48:53] Finished lang/rust | rust-1.76.0: Success
[4D:06:26:24] [02] [03:09:35] Finished devel/binutils@native | binutils-2.40_5,1: Success
(Note: start of visible ordering differences:)
[4D:14:54:31] [02] [03:38:55] Finished devel/aarch64-none-elf-gcc | aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.0_3: Success
[4D:16:13:00] [01] [4D:01:55:03] Finished devel/llvm18@default | llvm18-18.1.0.r3: Success
[4D:18:05:58] [02] [03:11:00] Finished devel/arm-none-eabi-gcc | arm-none-eabi-gcc-11.3.0_3: Success
[4D:23:00:13] [01] [06:46:06] Finished devel/boost-libs | boost-libs-1.84.0: Success
[5D:00:16:39] [01] [01:15:53] Finished textproc/source-highlight | source-highlight-3.1.9_9: Success
[5D:01:17:24] [02] [07:10:52] Finished lang/gcc13 | gcc13-13.2.0_4: Success
[5D:09:38:14] [01] [05:56:48] Finished devel/freebsd-gcc13@armv7 | armv7-gcc13-13.2.0_1: Success
[5D:10:18:58] [02] [05:44:02] Finished devel/gdb@py39 | gdb-14.1_2: Success
[5D:10:31:56] Stopping 2 builders
[main-CA7-default] [2024-03-06_03h15m10s] [committing] Queued: 265 Built: 265 Failed: 0   Skipped: 0   Ignored: 0   Fetched: 0   Tobuild: 0    Time: 5D:10:31:55

(So, a little over 4 days longer than the RPi4B example above.)

Note: 2794Mi MaxObs(Act+Wir+Lndry+SwapUsed) ("MaxObs":  short for "Maximum Observed")


2nd: Configuration points common to both the RPi4B and the
     OrangePi+2ed contexts.

ports-mgmt/poudriere-devel is used to build the packages.

devel/llvm18 options: using BE_NATIVE and omitting MLIR.
(What I normally build for armv7 and aarch64 targetting.)

Also, ports-mgmt/poudriere-devel omits the QEMU option,
as is normal for me.

265 packages are built, including pkg. It is the same
265 pacakges across contexts. (The order of the builds
does vary.)

/usr/local/etc/poudriere.conf has . . .

NO_ZFS=yes
PARALLEL_JOBS=2
ALLOW_MAKE_JOBS=yes
MAX_EXECUTION_TIME=432000
NOHANG_TIME=432000
MAX_EXECUTION_TIME_EXTRACT=14400
MAX_EXECUTION_TIME_INSTALL=14400
MAX_EXECUTION_TIME_PACKAGE=57600
MAX_EXECUTION_TIME_DEINSTALL=14400

NOTE: MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER_LIMIT is used to constrain
      what ALLOW_MAKE_JOBS does but is not set the
      same across the contexts.

/etc/fstab does not specify any tmpfs use or the
like: avoids competing for RAM+SWAP.

poudriere armv7 jail worlds are duplicates of each
other across the different media. Those worlds are
from a personal buildworld based on using
-mcpu=cortex-a7 for the code generation. The package
builds also use that.

/boot/loader.conf has . . .

# Delay when persistent low free RAM leads to
# Out Of Memory killing of processes:
vm.pageout_oom_seq=120

Heatsinks and fans for keeping things cool over the
sustained build activity.


3rd: Configuration points unique to the RPi4B context.

/usr/local/etc/poudriere.conf has . . .

USE_TMPFS="data"

(Based on the larger RAM and RAM+SWAP and that it
does not grow to be huge for the likes of lang/rust .)

/usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/make.conf has . . .

MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER_LIMIT=3

(Based on the larger RAM and RAM+SWAP.) This does mean
that the 3 load averages can be 6+ at times on the 4
hardware thread system while both ports being built are
respecting the limit. Some ports do not fully respect
the limit the whole time. This can make build-times
a somewhat messier comparison than one might hope across
the contexts. But for the specifics here, things should
be clear enough.

RAM == 8 GiBytes
RAM+SWAP == 38 GiBytes
(Note aarch64 allows a larger RAM multiplier limit without
warning of potential swap-related mistuning: "total
configured swap (? pages) exceeds maximum recommended
amount (? pages)" with "increase kern.maxswzone or reduce
amount of swap".)

5.1V 3.5A power supply, so a little extra margin for current.

/boot/efi/config.txt has:

over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2000
sdram_freq_min=3200
force_turbo=1
(Reliable operation, with margin, on the mix of v1.1, v1.4, and v1.5
RPi4B's that I have access to, 8 total.)

So: 2 GHz overclocking, using a fixed rate.

USB3 media: U2 Optane 960 GB media via a powered USB3 adaptor.

Kernel has: "arm64: improve UVA layout for 32bit processes"
( main's 967022aa5aa6 ). So an armv7 process can be somewhat
over 3 GiBytes for its address space.

Boot aarch64 env: a PkgBase world and kernel.GENERIC-NODEBUG pair.
FYI:

# uname -apKU
FreeBSD aarch64-main-pkgs 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT main-n268514-61b88a230bac GENERIC-NODEBUG arm64 aarch64 1500014 1500014


4th: Configuration points unique to the OrangePi+2ed context.

/usr/local/etc/poudriere.conf has . . .

USE_TMPFS=no

(Based on the smaller RAM --and smaller RAM+SWAP for avoiding
potential-mistuning notices.)

/usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/make.conf has . . .

MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER_LIMIT=2

(Based on the smaller RAM --and smaller RAM+SWAP for avoiding
potential-mistuning notices-- but wanting to still have margin
for bigger peak RAM+SWAP use than the example happens to do.)

RAM == 2 GiBytes
RAM+SWAP == 5.6 GiBytes
(Note armv7 has a smaller RAM multiplier limit without
warning of potential swap-related mistuning: "total
configured swap (? pages) exceeds maximum recommended
amount (? pages)" with "increase kern.maxswzone or reduce
amount of swap".)

In /etc/rc.conf I have:

if [ "`sysctl -i -n hw.fdt.model`" == "Xunlong Orange Pi Plus 2E" ]; then
 sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq=1008 > /dev/null
fi

In other words: a fixed 1GHz or so clock rate is used.

USB2 media: Actually USB3 media that also supports USB2
use. 1 TB Samsung Touch T7 (NVMe based) via a powered hub,
a USB3-capable one.



Side note:

I've no clue how to judge any tradeoff consequences for
"increase kern.maxswzone" for judging reasonableness of
such an action.

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com