From: Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>
To: "Lenar Lõhmus" <lenar@vision.ee>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailinglist <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: 2.6.x kernel sluggish behavior
Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 00:46:16 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <200405270046.16429.kernel@kolivas.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <40B49BD6.7050202@vision.ee>
On Wed, 26 May 2004 11:29 pm, Lenar Lõhmus wrote:
> Hi.
Hello
> Overall I really like the performance and smoothness of 2.6.x kernels,
Good to hear.
> but there has been always one problematic situation.
>
> It's debian here with X/KDE running. The problem manifests itself
> when one launches acroread-plugin in Mozilla or Mozilla-based browser.
A known case.
> I think it's definetely a scheduler problem (although caused by
> application bug).
This was one of my test cases for applications designed in a certain way that
makes them prone to priority inversion. I tried extremely hard to find a
workaround within the kernel and failed to do so. It only manifests with the
acroread plugin in a gecko browser on uniprocessor, and seems to be some
interaction within some gdk library if I recall correctly. Look through the
kernel archives for my description of an earlier version of blender that
exhibited this same problem. I suspect it's actually the binary only acroread
and not the gdk library at fault. My solution was to simply make all .pdf
files launch acroread separately.
Generic solutions for tackling priority inversion prone application designs
from within the kernel are expensive, and the best solution is to fix the
application. No doubt a differently designed scheduler would be less prone to
this particular interaction, but priority inversion is a "feature" of any
dynamic priority design scheduler to some degree and it is the particular
application that may or may not hit the resonant frequency (as I like to
think of it) of each scheduler.
Con
prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-05-26 15:25 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-05-26 13:29 2.6.x kernel sluggish behavior Lenar Lõhmus
2004-05-26 14:05 ` William Lee Irwin III
2004-05-26 16:05 ` Lenar Lõhmus
2004-05-26 14:46 ` Con Kolivas [this message]
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