Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 2 Mar 2003 15:33:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 2 Mar 2003 15:33:31 -0500 Received: from packet.digeo.com ([12.110.80.53]:22743 "EHLO packet.digeo.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 2 Mar 2003 15:33:30 -0500 Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 12:43:58 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: "Felipe Alfaro Solana" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: anticipatory scheduling questions Message-Id: <20030302124358.5e4c4751.akpm@digeo.com> In-Reply-To: <20030302114035.22346.qmail@linuxmail.org> References: <20030302114035.22346.qmail@linuxmail.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.9 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i586-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Mar 2003 20:43:48.0196 (UTC) FILETIME=[6CD34240:01C2E0FC] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1990 Lines: 46 "Felipe Alfaro Solana" wrote: > > > You have not actually said whether 2.5.63 base exhibits > > the same problem. From the vmstat traces it appears > > that the answer is "yes"? > > Both 2.5.63 and 2.5.63-mm1 exhibit this behavior, but > can't be reproduced with 2.4.20-2.54. By 2.54 I assume you mean 2.5.54? > > > I have retested this with 2.4.20-2.54, 2.5.63 and 2.5.63-mm1... > > > and have attached the files to this message > > > > Thanks. Note how 2.4 is consuming a few percent CPU, whereas 2.5 is > > consuming 100%. Approximately half of it system time. > > It seems is not "user" or "system" time what's being consumed, it's > "iowait" Look below :-) Your vmstat traces were showing tons of user time as well as system time. Please make sure that you have the latest version of procps, from http://surriel.com/procps/ or http://procps.sourceforge.net/ > > It does appear that some change in 2.5 has caused evolution to go berserk > > during this operation. > > I wouldn't say it's exactly Evolution what's going berserk. Doing a > "top -s1" while trying to reply to a big e-mail message, I've noticed > that "top" reports "iowait" starting at ~50%, then going up very fast > and then staying up at 90-95% all the time. This happens on 2.5.63 > and 2.5.63-mm1, however, on 2.4.20-2.54 kernel, "iowait" stays all > the time exactly at "0%" and idle time remains steady at 90-95%. Well certainly the IO stream _looks_ like it is stuck in IO-wait a lot. It is strange that this has been happening for a couple of months and seems to only affect Felipe Solana's copy of evolution. I still can't get my copy to spellcheck a thing. I need to wrestle with it a bit more. - 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/