Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 22:21:27 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 22:21:27 -0400 Received: from fastmail.fm ([209.61.183.86]:22167 "EHLO www.fastmail.fm") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 22:21:26 -0400 X-Mail-from: robm@fastmail.fm X-Spam-score: -0.1 X-Epoch: 1034389625 X-Sasl-enc: y7zgfTsPEFYn7WPwMHq51w Message-ID: <0f4301c27196$af8a8880$1900a8c0@lifebook> From: "Rob Mueller" To: "Andrew Morton" Cc: , "Jeremy Howard" References: <0f3201c2718c$750a13b0$1900a8c0@lifebook> <3DA77A20.2D28DBE7@digeo.com> Subject: Re: Strange load spikes on 2.4.19 kernel Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 12:25:47 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1464 Lines: 37 > > Filesystem is ext3 with one big / partition (that's a mistake > > we won't repeat, but too late now). This should be mounted > > with data=journal given the kernel command line above, though > > it's a bit hard to tell from the dmesg log: > > > > It's possible tht the journal keeps on filling. When that happens, > everything has to wait for writeback into the main filesystem. > Completion of that writeback frees up journal space and then everything > can unblock. > > Suggest you try data=ordered. We have a 192M journal, and from the dmesg log it's saying that it's got a 5 second flush interval, so I can't imagine that the journal is filling, but we'll try it and see I guess. What I don't understand is why the spike is so sudden, and decays so slowly. It's Friday night now, so the load is fairly low. I setup a loop to dump uptime information every 10 seconds and attached the result below. It's running smoothly, then 'bam', it's hit with something big, which then slowly decays off. A few extra things: 1. It happens every couple of minutes or so, but not exactly on any time, so it's not a cron job or anything 2. Viewing 'top', there are no extra processes obviously running when it happens Rob - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/