Re: System state too high for too long...

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

"Dan A. Dickey" <dan.dickey@savvis.net> wrote:
>
> This problem has now been persistent enough in the last few kernels
>  I've run that I've subscribed (once again) to the linux-kernel list
>  and would like to report it.
>  I'm using gentoo-sources-2.6.11-r9.
> 
>  When the system is compiling something, the state typically
>  stays at about 85-95% system time.  This just really does not
>  seem right for my workload, and additionally only appeared
>  a few releases ago (sorry, I didn't bother to track it - I thought
>  it might go away in a release or two; but it has not).
> 
>  Here is a little output of 'vmstat 5' when this is happening:
>  procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- 
>  ----cpu----
>   r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us 
>  sy id wa
>   1  0  12752  61548  57252 211092    0    0     2    50 1083   810 11 
>  89  0  0
>   1  0  12752  57572  57320 211160    0    0     0    63 1089   683  9 
>  91  0  0
>   1  0  12752  63288  57328 211220    0    0     8    39 1084   765 11 
>  89  0  0
>   1  0  12752  60648  57348 211200    0    0     0    56 1086   647  6 
>  94  0  0
>   1  0  12752  54972  57348 211200    0    0     0     3 1079   659  8 
>  92  0  0
>   1  0  12752  62284  57348 211268    0    0     4    53 1087   807 17 
>  83  0  0
>   1  0  12752  59400  57356 211328    0    0     0    34 1222  1919 17 
>  83  0  0

(grr, wordwrapping.)

- Check that your disks are running in DMA mode (if they're IDE) (with hdparm)

- See what `time make' says

- Generate a kernel profile (See Documentation/basic_profiling.txt)