100%wa for long periods of time

[Mark Knecht]

Hi all,
   Long time lurker. Seldom post here. I'm not a programmer.

   OK, so I'm bring up new hardware - Intel i7 920, Intel DX58SO
motherboard, 6GB Crucial triple channel DRAM. Using both the Gentoo
install CD (2.6.32 based) as well as 2.6.33-gentoo after booting the
install I am running into long periods of time - sometimes 30 seconds,
sometimes lasting minutes, where the machine appears to hang or slow
down very drastically. The only thing I've noticed so far is that
there are 100% waiting periods showing up in top. No messages in dmesg
or /var/log/messages. Just long periods where the the compiler acts
like the system has really slowed down and sometimes appears almost
completely dead.

   When this clears up then the system screams along building
software. When it happens is see things like the following where CPU's
1 & 5 sit at 100% waiting which lasted 2 or 3 minutes before clearing
up. The CPU that goes to 100% does move around but it does seem to
land on #5 more than others.

keeper ~ # top

top - 02:27:17 up 28 min,  2 users,  load average: 2.76, 1.95, 1.30
Tasks: 125 total,   1 running, 124 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,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id,100.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu2  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%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
Cpu4  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu5  :  0.0%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id, 99.7%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu6  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu7  :  0.0%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.7%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   6107024k total,  1448676k used,  4658348k free,   187492k buffers
Swap:  4200988k total,        0k used,  4200988k free,   915900k cached


keeper ~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 1 (rev 13)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 3 (rev 13)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 7 (rev 13)
00:10.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Physical and Link Layer
Registers Port 0 (rev 13)
00:10.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Routing and Protocol
Layer Registers Port 0 (rev 13)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management
Registers (rev 13)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch
Pad Registers (rev 13)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status
and RAS Registers (rev 13)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev 13)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82567LM-2 Gigabit
Network Connection
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD
Audio Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 1
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 2
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 5
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SATA
AHCI Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G96 [GeForce
9500 GT] (rev a1)
06:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6121 SATA II
Controller (rev b2)
07:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A
IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
keeper ~ #

keeper ~ # uname -a
Linux keeper 2.6.33-gentoo #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Mar 29 01:12:08 PDT 2010
x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
keeper ~ #

keeper ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
ipv6                  207757  24
usbhid                 21529  0
snd_hda_codec_realtek   239530  1
uhci_hcd               18047  0
ehci_hcd               30854  0
usbcore               115023  4 usbhid,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd
sg                     23029  0
snd_hda_intel          17688  0
snd_hda_codec          45755  2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel
firewire_ohci          20022  0
e1000e                111701  0
snd_pcm                58104  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
processor              23121  0
rtc_cmos                7678  0
snd_timer              15030  1 snd_pcm
rtc_core               11093  1 rtc_cmos
snd                    37476  5
snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore                800  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          5809  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
firewire_core          36109  1 firewire_ohci
rtc_lib                 1617  1 rtc_core
thermal                11650  0
keeper ~ #

Thanks,
Mark

Attachment: config.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data