Idle loadavg of ~1, maybe MD related

From: Robin H. Johnson
Date: Sun Dec 30 2007 - 05:13:26 EST


(Please CC me, I'm subbed to LKML).

My G5, while running practically nothing (just sshd and some to watch the
load), has a weird cycle of load averages. I think it might be related to MD,
simply because that's the only thing that is clocking up cputime.

A full cycle lasts approximately 27 minutes.
Mins Load
0-2 0.0-0.15 (stable, 0 level)
3-5 0.50, 0.80, 0.95 (fast increase)
6-21 0.95-1.10 (stable, 1 level)
22-24 0.9, 0.8, 0.1 (fast decrease, to 0 level)
25-27 0.2, 0.3, 0.15 (local maxima peak)

Here's a graph of it, spanning 230 minutes:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~robbat2/20071230-g5-loadavg-bug.png

Processed data for the graph here:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~robbat2/20071230-g5-loadavg-bug.txt

For the entire 230 minute period, there was _no_ disk I/O.
Not recorded by iostat, nor generated.

# while true ; do uptime ; iostat -t 60 2 -N -d | tail -n15 ; done >/dev/shm/foo

Example of single output pass for the above loop:
00:59:37 up 8:32, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.47, 0.66
Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
sda 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
md1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
md0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
md2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
md3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-usr 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-var 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-tmp 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-opt 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-home 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-usr_src 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0
vg-usr_portage 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0

This is basically 1842c7f2 from Linus's tree, my own stuff is config'd out with
=n for the moment. And the problem does still occur in the main tree.

Snippet from the head of 'top', sorting by cputime.

top - 01:59:08 up 9:32, 2 users, load average: 1.04, 0.87, 0.70
Tasks: 74 total, 1 running, 73 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Cpu1 : 0.0%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 12074480k total, 292520k used, 11781960k free, 76812k buffers
Swap: 8388536k total, 0k used, 8388536k free, 144276k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4635 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 8:14.33 md3_raid1
3121 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 3:15.12 md2_raid1
3098 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 3:07.83 md1_raid1
3076 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:45.82 md0_raid1
829 root 15 -5 0 0 0 D 0 0.0 0:01.85 kwindfarm
13 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.41 ksoftirqd/3
18 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.39 events/3
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.94 ksoftirqd/2
1 root 20 0 1900 652 576 S 0 0.0 0:00.89 init
32086 root 20 0 9336 2696 2076 S 0 0.0 0:00.87 sshd

# ver_linux
Linux buck-int 2.6.24-rc6-prod-g6f0f5304 #10 SMP Sat Dec 29 05:11:24 PST 2007 ppc64 PPC970MP, altivec supported PowerMac11,2 GNU/Linux

Gnu C 4.2.2
Gnu make 3.81
binutils 2.18
util-linux 2.13
mount 2.13
module-init-tools 3.4
e2fsprogs 1.40.3
reiserfsprogs 3.6.19
xfsprogs 2.9.4
quota-tools 3.15.
PPP 2.4.4
Linux C Library 2.7
Dynamic linker (ldd) 2.7
Procps 3.2.7
Net-tools 1.60
Kbd 1.13
Sh-utils 6.9
udev 118
wireless-tools 29
Modules Loaded nfsd exportfs auth_rpcgss ipv6 unix tg3 nfs_acl lockd sunrpc dm_mod

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
nfsd 346552 1
exportfs 8392 1 nfsd
auth_rpcgss 69152 1 nfsd
ipv6 428760 20
unix 47384 13
tg3 159020 0
nfs_acl 6056 1 nfsd
lockd 105248 1 nfsd
sunrpc 281248 6 nfsd,auth_rpcgss,nfs_acl,lockd
dm_mod 100520 15

# ps -ef
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 init [3]
root 2 0 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [migration/0]
root 4 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 5 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [watchdog/0]
root 6 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [migration/1]
root 7 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/1]
root 8 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [watchdog/1]
root 9 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [migration/2]
root 10 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/2]
root 11 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [watchdog/2]
root 12 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [migration/3]
root 13 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:01 [ksoftirqd/3]
root 14 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [watchdog/3]
root 15 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [events/0]
root 16 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [events/1]
root 17 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [events/2]
root 18 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:01 [events/3]
root 19 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [khelper]
root 103 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kblockd/0]
root 104 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kblockd/1]
root 105 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kblockd/2]
root 106 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kblockd/3]
root 114 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ata/0]
root 115 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ata/1]
root 116 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ata/2]
root 117 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ata/3]
root 118 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ata_aux]
root 119 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [ksuspend_usbd]
root 125 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [khubd]
root 128 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kseriod]
root 155 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [pdflush]
root 156 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [pdflush]
root 157 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kswapd0]
root 205 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [aio/0]
root 206 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [aio/1]
root 207 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [aio/2]
root 208 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [aio/3]
root 829 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:01 [kwindfarm]
root 841 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_0]
root 843 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_1]
root 845 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_2]
root 847 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_3]
root 2531 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [rpciod/0]
root 2532 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [rpciod/1]
root 2533 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [rpciod/2]
root 2534 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [rpciod/3]
root 3076 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:45 [md0_raid1]
root 3098 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:03:07 [md1_raid1]
root 3121 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:03:14 [md2_raid1]
root 3169 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 3285 1 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon
root 4635 2 1 Dec29 ? 00:08:12 [md3_raid1]
root 4740 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 4741 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 4742 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 4743 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [reiserfs/0]
root 4744 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [reiserfs/1]
root 4745 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [reiserfs/2]
root 4746 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [reiserfs/3]
root 4747 2 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 5663 32089 0 01:57 pts/1 00:00:00 ps -ef
root 7324 1 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/dhcpcd -h buck-int -t 10 -R -N -Y -I -R -N -Y eth0
root 8340 1 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root 8517 1 0 Dec29 tty1 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
root 8518 1 0 Dec29 tty2 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
root 8519 1 0 Dec29 tty3 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
root 8521 1 0 Dec29 tty4 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
root 8522 1 0 Dec29 tty5 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
root 8524 1 0 Dec29 tty6 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux
root 9436 8340 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 sshd: root@pts/0
root 9440 9436 0 Dec29 pts/0 00:00:00 -bash
root 32086 8340 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:00 sshd: root@pts/1
root 32089 32086 0 Dec29 pts/1 00:00:00 -bash

--
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy
E-Mail : robbat2@xxxxxxxxxx
GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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