Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:39:56 -0400 | From | tmhikaru@gmail ... | Subject | Re: Linux 2.6.35.6 |
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On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 09:51:35PM +0200, Florian Mickler wrote: > I can't comment on the bouncing part, but increased load average is > partly bisected down in Bug 16525 (unexpected high load since 2.6.35 > Bug 16525)[1]. Maybe you are seeing something similiar?
If you're referring to
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16525
then I have to admit that's very interesting; in fact, I tested my machine without X running, and the problem I'm having goes away entirely - loadavg quickly settles to 0.00 - and even with *only* a mrxvt terminal running, that is to say NO window manager, just mrxvt running, X on 2.6.35.3 and later has the wildly bouncy load averages.
Here's a graphical example of just how wacky this is:
http://yfrog.com/6lloadbp
In this image, the dip down to less than 0.5 after the 18'th is due to me experimenting using the slackware distribution kernel (2.6.33.4) after I finally noticed something was amiss. The sharp rise afterwards is due to me first, building 2.6.35.5, and then afterwards, using it. To be perfectly clear, I've previously used 2.6.34.2 and did not experience the problem there either, nor is it in 2.6.33.4.
The majority of time during the last month the machine has sat idle, with nothing to do except idle with the screen turned off. Besides building kernels, the most difficult task I've asked of it has been websurfing. This is not exactly a difficult job for this machine, and hardly would normally push the load average up that high for that long.
Greg, I noticed that in the ChangeLogs for 2.6.35.x there were some patches for the intel driver which seem to be to my untrained eye an attempt to fix Linus' problem talked about in that bug report; The patch that is referenced in the bug report contains some things at least that were not applied to the tree; since I have no idea what I'm looking at, could you verify for me if I'm barking up the right tree here? If I am, I'll try building a clean 2.6.35 kernel with that patch applied and see if my problem disappears.
Anyway, I am now going to start going backwards through 2.6.35.x until I discover which version(s) caused my particular issue. Since 2.6.35.3 and later have had the problem, and 2.6.35.2 will not compile for me, I'm going to first compile and test 2.6.35.1.
This will probably take some time as the bouncy load averages are consistently inconsistent and tend to, much like a watched kettle, not show up when I expect them to, then do so immediately when I turn my back. :)
Thanks for the tip, Tim McGrath [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |