From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262083AbVFHENb (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Jun 2005 00:13:31 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262090AbVFHENb (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Jun 2005 00:13:31 -0400 Received: from fire.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:4499 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262083AbVFHENZ (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Jun 2005 00:13:25 -0400 Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 21:13:10 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: dan.dickey@savvis.net Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: System state too high for too long... Message-Id: <20050607211310.7f6ee27e.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <200506071125.41543.dan.dickey@savvis.net> References: <200506071125.41543.dan.dickey@savvis.net> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 1.0.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org "Dan A. Dickey" 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)