tuned

tuned is a daemon that applies system tuning profiles (CPU governor, sysctl, disk and network settings) on Linux. It is standard on RHEL and Fedora and also packaged for Debian and Ubuntu. Use it to switch a host between balanced, throughput and latency settings, and to set VM guest and host defaults.

Project: tuned

Install and Enable #

COMMAND	DESCRIPTION
`sudo dnf install tuned`	RHEL, Fedora
`sudo systemctl enable --now tuned`	Start now and at boot
`tuned-adm active`	Current profile

On Debian and Ubuntu the packages are reported as tuned, tuned-utils, tuned-ppd and tuned-gtk (check apt show tuned, versions differ by release). tuned conflicts with power-profiles-daemon and cpupower, so disable those first. tuned-ppd provides a compatible interface for desktop power settings and also conflicts with power-profiles-daemon. The active profile is stored in /etc/tuned/active_profile.

tuned-adm #

COMMAND	DESCRIPTION
`tuned-adm list`	Available profiles
`tuned-adm active`	Active profile
`tuned-adm profile <NAME>`	Switch to a profile
`tuned-adm profile <A> <B>`	Merge several profiles (later ones win)
`tuned-adm profile_info [<NAME>]`	Describe a profile
`tuned-adm recommend`	Suggest a profile for this machine
`tuned-adm verify`	Check the system still matches the active profile (`-i` ignores errors)
`tuned-adm auto_profile`	Select the recommended profile
`tuned-adm profile_mode`	Show the profile mode
`tuned-adm off`	Turn tuning off

recommend uses /etc/system-release-cpe and virt-what.

Built-in Profiles #

PROFILE	USE
`balanced`	Default compromise between power and speed
`balanced-battery`	Balanced, for laptops on battery
`powersave`	Save power
`throughput-performance`	Servers, maximum throughput
`accelerator-performance`	Throughput tuned for accelerators
`latency-performance`	Low latency
`network-throughput`	Bulk network transfer
`network-latency`	Low network latency
`desktop`	Interactive desktops
`hpc-compute`	HPC workloads
`virtual-guest`	Inside a VM
`virtual-host`	On a hypervisor
`intel-sst`	Intel Speed Select
`optimize-serial-console`	Serial console responsiveness
`aws`	AWS instances

virtual-guest builds on throughput-performance with vm.swappiness=30 and higher dirty page limits. virtual-host adds more aggressive dirty page writeback.

VMs and Proxmox #

There is no official Proxmox guidance. A sensible default, inferred from the profile descriptions, is virtual-guest in VMs and virtual-host on the hypervisor. Compare benchmarks before and after, because a profile that suits one workload can hurt another. See Performance Troubleshooting.

Custom Profiles #

Put a profile in its own directory with a tuned.conf:

ini
[main]
summary=Throughput with custom swappiness
include=throughput-performance

[sysctl]
vm.swappiness=10

LOCATION	NOTES
`/etc/tuned/profiles/<NAME>/tuned.conf`	Current upstream layout
`/etc/tuned/<NAME>/tuned.conf`	Older layout, still used by older releases
`/usr/lib/tuned/profiles`	Shipped profiles (do not edit)

The path differs between releases, so check profile_dirs in tuned-main.conf on your system.

include= pulls in another profile.
Each other section is a plugin, with optional type=, devices= and replace=1.
Plugins include audio, bootloader, cpu, disk, modules, mounts, net, script, scheduler, scsi_host, selinux, sysctl, sysfs, systemd, usb, video and vm.
A [script] section runs your script with script=${i:PROFILE_DIR}/profile.sh.

After editing, reload with sudo tuned-adm profile <NAME> or restart the service.

Daemon Config and Logs #

/etc/tuned/tuned-main.conf defaults, as read from the repository:

SETTING	DEFAULT
`daemon`	`1`
`dynamic_tuning`	`0`
`update_interval`	`10`
`log_file_count`	`2`
`profile_dirs`	`/usr/lib/tuned/profiles,/etc/tuned/profiles`

The default log is /var/log/tuned/tuned.log. Dynamic tuning is off by default.

Not Verified #

Exact option syntax for the [bootloader] and [cpu] plugins, tuned-ppd usage, and the custom profile path on your distribution.