rtcqs 0.5.0

Linux audio performance analyzer

Introduction

rtcqs is a Python utility to analyze your system and detect possible bottlenecks that could have a negative impact on the performance of your system when working with Linux audio. It is heavily inspired by raboof’s excellent realtimeconfigquickscan script in Python.

Features

Basically the same as realtimeconfigquickscan:

• Root check

• Audio group check

• CPU frequency check

• High resolution timers check

• Preempt RT check

• rtprio check

• Swappiness check

• Filesystem check

Additional features:

• Spectre/Meltdown mitigations check

• Basic IRQ check of sound cards and USB ports

• Power management check

• Qt GUI

• tkinter GUI

Usage

When writing this script I could rely on Python’s built-in functionality so no extra modules are needed, just Python 3. To run the script first clone this repository.

git clone https://codeberg.org/rtcqs/rtcqs.git

Then cd into the newly created directory.

cd rtcqs

And run the script.

./src/rtcqs/rtcqs.py

GUI

rtcqs comes with two GUI’s, a basic and light tkinter GUI and a polished and heavy Qt GUI. To run the GUI first install the PySimpleGUI (tkinter) or PySimpleGUIQt (Qt) module either in your home directory or in a virtual environment. Bear in mind that the Qt version will pull in a lot of dependencies and is in a beta state. Hence I do not recommend using the Qt version and installation of the Qt GUI is not covered in this manual.

Home directory

Make sure pip is installed, on Ubuntu this would be the python3-pip package. For the tkinter GUI you will also need python3-tk. Then install PySimpleGUI or PySimpleGUIQt for your user.

For the tkinter GUI you will need rtcqs and the PySimpleGUI module.

pip install rtcqs PySimpleGUI

Virtual Environment

Make sure the virtual environment module is installed, on Ubuntu this would be python3-venv. Then create a virtual environment in the rtcqs directory and install PySimpleGUI or PySimpleGUIQt in there.

For the tkinter GUI use the following commands.

python3 -m venv venv &&
. venv/bin/activate &&
pip install --upgrade pip setuptools rtcqs PySimpleGUI

You can now run the GUI with rtcqs_gui. Next time you’d like to run the GUI load the virtual environment again and spin up the GUI.

. venv/bin/activate
rtcqs_gui

Overview

When running the GUI it will immediately show the results of the checks. All checks have their own tab. Each tab title consists of a symbol that shows the check result and the name of the check. A ✔ means the check was successful while a ✘ means rtcqs encountered an issue. This way you can quickly spot which checks have issues.

Clicking ‘Cancel’ will close rtcqs. Clicking ‘About’ will bring up a popup window which displays the version and a short description.

rtcqs main window (tkinter version)

rtcqs main window (Qt version)

rtcqs about window (tkinter version)

rtcqs about window (Qt version)

Future plans

• Extend filesystem check

• Disk scheduler check

Contact

To contact me send me a mail or if it’s a technical issue or question, use this project’s issue tracker.

Thanks

Many thanks of course to the original author of realtimeconfigquickscan, Arnout Engelen a.k.a. raboof.