Re: another must-fix: major PS/2 mouse problem

Vojtech Pavlik
2003-06-04T07:34:23Z

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 11:21:55PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:

> We believe that it may be due to the ethernet driver holding interrupts off
> for too long when the traffic is heavy.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that the ethernet driver
disables the interrupts for a too long time, it just means that the
computer is only servicing the network interrupts at that time, and
since the mouse interrupt does have a lower priority, it's serviced
not very often and with huge delays.

In such a case the network driver should either use interrupt mitigation
if the cards supports it (reading many packets per one interrupt) or
switch to a polled mode.

> Does that seem to match your observations? Does the problem happen when
> the net traffic is high?
>
> Which ethernet driver are you using?

--
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs, SuSE CR