Re: [Bug #12650] Strange load average and ksoftirqd behavior with2.6.29-rc2-git1

From: Damien Wyart
Date: Sun Feb 15 2009 - 05:42:56 EST


> > Note that if the box you test this on is multi-core or HT, then interpreting
> > traces is easier if there's just a single CPU to look at. In that case i'd
> > suggest to reproduce with just a single core, by turning the second one off:

> > echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

> > Or, if the problem only occurs with two cpus, restrict tracing to CPU#1:

> > echo 2 > /debug/tracing/tracing_cpumask

> The box I test on is HT, so I tried the first suggestion and it made the
> problem much less visible (but not completely absent).

> So I used "echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online" to go back to
> HT mode and then it made the problem much more visible on CPU#1:
> ksoftirqd/1 is running a lot and ksoftirqd/0 is almost normal. The load
> average is about 0.80 and the total running time for ksoftirqd/1 is
> almost one minute (and I booted on rc5 ten minutes ago)!

> So I followed the tracing steps in the tutorial (with the 1 sec sleep),
> which gave me this:
> http://damien.wyart.free.fr/trace_2.6.29-rc5_ksoftirqd_prob.txt.gz

Of course, I used your first suggestion (tracing on CPU#1) to get this
trace.

--
Damien
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