3 seconds of dead air! Latencies?

William E. Roadcap (roadcapw@cfw.com)
Sat, 23 Mar 1996 11:41:12 -0500 (EST)


I've noticed a minor inconvenience as of late which I think started
sometime within the 1.3.7? kernels.

I will be reading/writing mail and the computer will be quiet otherwise.
Nothing much else is running on the system, no high memory usage at the
time.

Then in the midst of the quietness the hard drive will slightly activate
and the system will be totally unresponsive for about 3 seconds.

It it is possible to switch VCs during this time, but nothing else except
the hard drive seems to be working. And it isn't really chattering much.

No keyboard or mouse feedback, although I think the keystrokes are being
accepted and are echoed AFTER the dead air.

So, is this related to the INT latencies I've been reading about?
Is this being caused by the kswapd?
Any ideas from anyone?

If this recent quirk is in fact a kernel problem, I hope it improves,
'cause it sure blows a hole in my bragging to people about how Linux can
run this and this and that and this and never skip a beat. :-(

__
William E. Roadcap mailto://roadcapw@cfw.com
TITUS Software ftp://titus.cfw.com/pub
Waynesboro, Va (USA) http://www.cfw.com/~roadcapw