Very high load on P4 machines with 2.4.28

[Marek Habersack <grendel@caudium.net>]

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Hello,

 We have several machines with similar configurations

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82875P Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB (ICH5) Serial ATA 150 Storage Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
0000:02:09.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)
0000:02:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82541EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
0000:02:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82541EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)

and

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) UltraATA-100 IDE Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
0000:01:05.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
0000:01:06.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

equipped with 2.6Ghz P4 CPUs, 1Gb of ram, 2-4gb of swap, the kernel config
is attached. The machines have normal load averages hovering not higher than
7.0, depending on the time of the day etc. Two of the machines run 2.4.25,
one 2.4.27 and they work fine. When booted with 2.4.28, though (compiled
with Debian's gcc 2.3.5, with p3 or p4 CPU selected in the config), the load
is climbing very fast and hovers around a value 3-4 times higher than with
the older kernels. Booted back in the old kernel, the load comes to its
usual level. The logs suggest nothing, no errors, nothing unusual is
happening. 

Has anyone had similar problems with 2.4.28 in an environment resembling the
above? Could it be a problem with highmem i/o?

tia,

marek

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