Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932438AbWEFElS (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 May 2006 00:41:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932445AbWEFElS (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 May 2006 00:41:18 -0400 Received: from mail.pioneer-pra.com ([65.205.244.70]:18340 "EHLO mail1.dmz.sj.pioneer-pra.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932438AbWEFElR (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 May 2006 00:41:17 -0400 From: Jason Schoonover Organization: Pioneer PRA To: Robert Hancock Subject: Re: High load average on disk I/O on 2.6.17-rc3 Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 21:39:49 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.3 Cc: linux-kernel References: <69c8K-3Bu-57@gated-at.bofh.it> <445BDBED.7050101@shaw.ca> In-Reply-To: <445BDBED.7050101@shaw.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200605052139.49241.jasons@pioneer-pra.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1804 Lines: 51 Hi Robert, There are, this is the relevant output of the process list: ... 4659 pts/6 Ss 0:00 -bash 4671 pts/5 R+ 0:12 cp -a test-dir/ new-test 4676 ? D 0:00 [pdflush] 4679 ? D 0:00 [pdflush] 4687 pts/4 D+ 0:01 hdparm -t /dev/sda 4688 ? D 0:00 [pdflush] 4690 ? D 0:00 [pdflush] 4692 ? D 0:00 [pdflush] ... This was when I was copying a directory and then doing a performance test with hdparm in a separate shell. The hdparm process was in [D+] state and basically waited until the cp was finished. During the whole thing there were up to 5 pdflush processes in [D] state. The 5 minute load average hit 8.90 during this test. Does that help? Jason -------Original Message----- From: Robert Hancock Sent: Friday 05 May 2006 16:12 To: linux-kernel Subject: Re: High load average on disk I/O on 2.6.17-rc3 Jason Schoonover wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm not sure if this is the right list to post to, so please direct me to > the appropriate list if this is the wrong one. > > I'm having some problems on the latest 2.6.17-rc3 kernel and SCSI disk I/O. > Whenever I copy any large file (over 500GB) the load average starts to > slowly rise and after about a minute it is up to 7.5 and keeps on rising > (depending on how long the file takes to copy). When I watch top, the > processes at the top of the list are cp, pdflush, kjournald and kswapd. Are there some processes stuck in D state? These will contribute to the load average even if they are not using CPU. - 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/