Re: 2.6.8-rc2-mm2, staircase sched and ESD

[Martin Schlemmer <azarah@nosferatu.za.org>]

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On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 00:31, Con Kolivas wrote:
> Zan Lynx writes:
> 
> > The 2.6.8-rc2-mm2 kernel has the staircase scheduler, right?  Well, I am
> > seeing an odd thing.  At least, I think it is odd.
> > 
> > I'm running Fedora Core 2 and playing music with Rhythmbox.  When I
> > watch top sorted by priority, I see esd slowly increase its priority
> > until it reaches 38, then it goes back to 20.  ESD is only using 1-2%
> > CPU.
> > 
> > This is causing a problem because doing just about anything in X, like
> > bring up a new window or drag a window causes the sound to just stop.
> > 
> > Why does ESD's priority keep climbing?
> > 
> > Oh yes, this does not happen if I change /proc/sys/fs/interactive to 0. 
> > When it is 0, X's priority climbs faster than ESDs and does not cause
> > the problem.
> 
> Yes this is a known issue with esd. It basically wakes up far too frequently 
> for it's own good. esd should not be required with alsa drivers and 
> 2.6 since alsa supports sharing of the sound card / mixing on it's own so 
> adding esd adds an unnecessary layer to the sound drivers. It ends 
> up doing this:
> esd->oss emulation->alsa.
> 

This is not entirely true - or at least not on a more modern
distro that uses alsa:

---
nosferatu root # lsof | grep esd | grep /dev
esd        8886  azarah  mem    CHR     116,16                6226 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
esd        8886  azarah    0r   CHR        1,3                 756 /dev/null
esd        8886  azarah    1u   CHR        4,4                1193 /dev/vc/4
esd        8886  azarah    2u   CHR        4,4                1193 /dev/vc/4
esd        8886  azarah   29u   CHR     116,16                6226 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
esd        8886  azarah   30r   CHR     116,33                6058 /dev/snd/timer
esd       16748  azarah  mem    CHR     116,16                6226 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
esd       16748  azarah   29u   CHR     116,16                6226 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
nosferatu root # ldd `which esd` | grep asound
        libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 (0x41b0d000)
nosferatu root #
---

-- 
Martin Schlemmer

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