From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list linux-mips); Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:46:48 +0100 (BST) Received: from zrtps0kn.nortel.com ([47.140.192.55]:20443 "EHLO zrtps0kn.nortel.com") by ftp.linux-mips.org with ESMTP id S20022316AbYHEUqm (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2008 21:46:42 +0100 Received: from zcarhxs1.corp.nortel.com (zcarhxs1.corp.nortel.com [47.129.230.89]) by zrtps0kn.nortel.com (Switch-2.2.6/Switch-2.2.0) with ESMTP id m75KkVh02902; Tue, 5 Aug 2008 20:46:31 GMT Received: from [47.130.64.132] ([47.130.64.132] RDNS failed) by zcarhxs1.corp.nortel.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959); Tue, 5 Aug 2008 16:46:30 -0400 Message-ID: <4898BC23.6050704@nortel.com> Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:46:27 -0600 From: "Chris Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-6 (X11/20050513) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chad Reese CC: linux-mips@linux-mips.org, ralf@linux-mips.org Subject: Re: looking for help interpreting softlockup/stack trace References: <48989AFE.5000500@nortel.com> <4898B7DD.6090402@caviumnetworks.com> In-Reply-To: <4898B7DD.6090402@caviumnetworks.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Aug 2008 20:46:30.0636 (UTC) FILETIME=[56CBE2C0:01C8F73C] Return-Path: X-Envelope-To: <"|/home/ecartis/ecartis -s linux-mips"> (uid 0) X-Orcpt: rfc822;linux-mips@linux-mips.org Original-Recipient: rfc822;linux-mips@linux-mips.org X-archive-position: 20120 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: linux-mips-bounce@linux-mips.org Errors-to: linux-mips-bounce@linux-mips.org X-original-sender: cfriesen@nortel.com Precedence: bulk X-list: linux-mips Chad Reese wrote: > I assume this is happening under high network load. Some early Octeon > ethernet drivers had a problem where they could starve the rest of the > system processing incoming packets. The message you are getting is the > kernel warning you that userspace hasn't been given any processing time. > What is probably happening is the cavium_ethernet driver is spending all > its time in a receive tasklet getting packets and then dropping them. > This has been fixed in a later cavium SDK, but it looks like you are > running an ancient kernel. A newer kernel is available on the cavium > support site. It seems unlikely it's due to cpu load. It's only receiving around 30000 packets/sec total, and before the problem shows up "top" shows some cores at around 25% and others totally idle. The only symptom of the problem is that the system simply stops responding. You wouldn't happen to know which versions fixed the problem you described above, would you? Upgrading the kernel isn't an option, but it wouldn't be the first time we've had to backport things. > The cavium ethernet driver doesn't use the standard NAPI interface since > it doesn't support multicore receive for a single port. Ah...I was wondering about that. Chris