Bad interactivity with 2.6-test9

Bad interactivity with 2.6-test9

[Stan Bubrouski]

Hey,

I have been testing 2.6-test9 (Arjan van de Ven's 2.6.0-0.test9.1.67
RPMS rebuilt) tainted by nvidia drivers.

The kernel has worked awesome and desktop interactivity works great
under most circumstances, however I have noticed something ratehr
annoying.

When I start watching a video under mplayer and have something like
spamassassin doing a sa-learn in an x-term if I start the sa-learn
before mplayer and then play a video, the sa-learn makes  no  progress
until I switch away from mplayer (playing full screen).  After which
sa-learn continues to filter through messages much faster, and even
while mplayer is going is still progressing much faster than before I
switched away from mplayer the first time.

Very odd.  Con anyone ideas?

-sb

Re: Bad interactivity with 2.6-test9

[Rik van Riel]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Stan Bubrouski wrote:

> When I start watching a video under mplayer and have something like
> spamassassin doing a sa-learn in an x-term if I start the sa-learn
> before mplayer and then play a video, the sa-learn makes  no  progress
> until I switch away from mplayer (playing full screen).  After which
> sa-learn continues to filter through messages much faster, and even
> while mplayer is going is still progressing much faster than before I
> switched away from mplayer the first time.
> 
> Very odd.  Con anyone ideas?

Looks like scheduler starvation.  Con ?

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Re: Bad interactivity with 2.6-test9

[Stan Bubrouski]

On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 13:54, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Stan Bubrouski wrote:
> 
> > When I start watching a video under mplayer and have something like
> > spamassassin doing a sa-learn in an x-term if I start the sa-learn
> > before mplayer and then play a video, the sa-learn makes  no  progress
> > until I switch away from mplayer (playing full screen).  After which
> > sa-learn continues to filter through messages much faster, and even
> > while mplayer is going is still progressing much faster than before I
> > switched away from mplayer the first time.
> > 
> > Very odd.  Con anyone ideas?
> 
> Looks like scheduler starvation.  Con ?

Seems like it.  I'll do some testing later to see exactly how
consistently I can reproduce this.  I have noticed this numerous times
all with -test9.

-sb

Re: Bad interactivity with 2.6-test9

[Con Kolivas]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 07:03 am, Stan Bubrouski wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 13:54, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Stan Bubrouski wrote:
> > > When I start watching a video under mplayer and have something like
> > > spamassassin doing a sa-learn in an x-term if I start the sa-learn
> > > before mplayer and then play a video, the sa-learn makes  no  progress
> > > until I switch away from mplayer (playing full screen).  After which
> > > sa-learn continues to filter through messages much faster, and even
> > > while mplayer is going is still progressing much faster than before I
> > > switched away from mplayer the first time.
> > >
> > > Very odd.  Con anyone ideas?
> >
> > Looks like scheduler starvation.  Con ?
>
> Seems like it.  I'll do some testing later to see exactly how
> consistently I can reproduce this.  I have noticed this numerous times
> all with -test9.

Usual checks. See if it happened with test6,7,8 as well as 9.
Do `vmstat 1' output to file and `top -d 1' output to file. They can tell if 
it's a dynamic priority related scheduler starvation issue.

Con