Re: 2.5.64-mm2->4 hangs on contest

[Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 18:05, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> At 01:29 PM 3/10/2003 +1100, you wrote:
> >Tried running contest on 2.5.64-mm2 and mm4 and had the same thing happen.
> > It will hang reliably during process_load. I tried not running
> > process_load but it would still get stuck in one of the other loads
> > (either a tar load or list load). I can simply stop contest at that stage
> > but then the machine wont work well hanging at the console after a minute
> > or so. This started at mm2 (doesn't happen with mm1).
> >
> >Here is the sysrq-p and sysrq-t output during process_load (which hangs
> > every time):
>
> hmm, the below looks interesting to me...
>
> >ksoftirqd/0   R C129A000     2      1             3       (L-TLB)
> >Call Trace:
> >  [<c0118f3e>] ksoftirqd+0x5e/0x9c
> >  [<c0118ee0>] ksoftirqd+0x0/0x9c
> >  [<c0106f1d>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xc
>
> I see that too with irman.  You could try renicing the shell you start
> contest from to >= +12.  With irman, what appears to be cpu starvation
> ceases to be a problem at exactly +12.  I also see kapmd constantly wanting
> to run but not being serviced.

Contest uses a modified process load from irman so it exhibits similar 
behaviour. Not sure what +12 actually tells me though :-( 

My simplistic understanding is that the pipe task in process_load gets 
constantly elevated as "interactive" by the new scheduler, and nothing else 
ever happens.

Con