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CachyOS

CachyOS Settings

Alongside our optimized kernels and repositories, we also provide settings that further improve the desktop experience, as well as some helper scripts for QoL improvements. All these configurations and scripts are under the cachyos-settings package.

sysctl Tweaks

Section titled “sysctl Tweaks”

We provide a lot of sysctl tweaks that aim to improve overall desktop performance. Each sysctl entry is well documented in the file 99-cachyos-settings.conf.

To make changes to any of these values, copy the original entry and make a new file under /etc/sysctl.d/ with the modified value.

Modifying sysctl values

Section titled “Modifying sysctl values”

  1. Take a look at the original value from cachyos-settings

    Terminal window
    cat /usr/lib/sysctl.d/99-cachyos-settings.conf
    # Only experimental!
    # Let Realtime tasks run as long they need
    # sched: RT throttling activated
    kernel.sched_rt_runtime_us=-1

  2. Make a new file in /etc/sysctl.d to make changes to the sysctl settings

    Reverting kernel.sched_rt_runtime_us= to its default value
    sudo micro /etc/sysctl.d/99-kernel-sched-rt.conf # If the file doesn't exist, this command creates and lets you edit the file
    kernel.sched_rt_runtime_us=950000

udev Rules

Section titled “udev Rules”
  • ZRAM Rules - Sets ZRAM swappiness to a more aggressive value so cache is more likely to swap to ZRAM
  • HPET Permissions - Allows access to rtc0 and hpet device nodes by the audio group
  • SATA Power Management - Sets power management policy of SATA devices to max_performance
  • I/O Scheduler Rules - Selects the optimal scheduler for each drive type (HDD, SSD, NVMe)
  • hdparm Rules - Sets SATA and IDE HDDs to maximum performance
  • NVIDIA RTD3 - Configures dynamic power management functionality for the Turing GPU generation. RTD3 does not work properly on Turing GPUs with the open modules
  • CPU DMA Latency - Allows access to the cpu_dma_latency device node by the audio group
  • snd_hda_intel PM - Sets power saving to 0 on AC Power and restores the previous value when switching to Battery

modprobe Options

Section titled “modprobe Options”
  • Forces AMDGPU driver on Southern Islands (GCN 1.0) and Sea Islands (GCN 2.0)
  • Enables various tweaks for NVIDIA
  • Blacklists watchdog modules
  • Disables power_save for the sna_hda_intel audio driver

Helper Scripts

Section titled “Helper Scripts”

  • cachyos-bugreport.sh - Collects various logs from inxi, dmesg and journalctl to aid in troubleshooting

  • game-performance - Wrapper script for powerprofilesctl to switch to performance profile on-demand. See Power Profile Switching On Demand

  • dlss-swapper - Wrapper script to force the latest DLSS preset in games that support the technology

  • dlss-swapper-dll - Like dlss-swapper, but requires manually updating the nvngx_dlss.dll library shipped with the game; may work with games that have issues with the regular version of the script

  • kerver - QoL script to show information about the current kernel

  • paste-cachyos - Script to paste terminal output for text files from the system

    Terminal window
    paste-cachyos /path/to/file

  • pci-latency - Reduces latency_timer value to 80 for PCI sound cards and resets all the other PCI devices to 20 and 0

    Enabling pci-latency system-wide
    sudo systemctl enable --now pci-latency.service

  • sbctl-batch-sign - Helper script to easily sign kernel images and EFI binaries for secure boot and saves them to sbctl’s database

  • topmem - Shows RAM & swap & ksm stats of 10 processes in a descending order

  • zink-run - Makes it easier to execute an OpenGL program through Zink Gallium Driver

Other configurations

Section titled “Other configurations”

Memory Usage Tweaks

Section titled “Memory Usage Tweaks”
  • THP Shrinker configuration max_ptes_none = 409
  • Set maximum size to 50MB for the systemd journal
  • ZRAM Generator - Sets ZRAM to the same size as RAM and use ZSTD for compression

Ananicy-cpp Rules

Section titled “Ananicy-cpp Rules”

Network Modifications

Section titled “Network Modifications”

NTP QoL

Section titled “NTP QoL”
  • Preferred server set to Cloudflare
  • Fallback servers: Google and Arch Linux

systemd Services Tweaks

Section titled “systemd Services Tweaks”
  • Timeout for starting a service/unit set to 15s
  • Timeout for stopping a service/unit set to 10s
  • Soft limit for opened file descriptors set to 2048
  • Hard limit for opened file descriptors set to 2097152

X.Org

Section titled “X.Org”