From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932170AbVHWNaw (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:30:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932171AbVHWNaw (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:30:52 -0400 Received: from dtp.xs4all.nl ([80.126.206.180]:3188 "HELO abra2.bitwizard.nl") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S932170AbVHWNav (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:30:51 -0400 Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 15:30:50 +0200 From: Erik Mouw To: Rajesh Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: debug a high load average Message-ID: <20050823133050.GC29062@harddisk-recovery.com> References: <430B03B4.8040205@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <430B03B4.8040205@gmail.com> Organization: Harddisk-recovery.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 04:38:36PM +0530, Rajesh wrote: > I have a case occasionally when I copy data from a usb storage (ipod) to > my hard drive the load average goes up from 0.4 to about 15.0, and the > system becomes very unusable till I kill the cp command. I have checked > the CPU usage, bytes read from usb device, byte written to hard drive > etc, and all these values are low like CPU usage is at a maximum of 30%, > disk read bytes is at an average of 1.5 MiB/s, disk write bytes is at > 1.5 MiB/s, number of processes is at 110, etc, during this high load. 1.5 MB/s suggests you're using an IDE drive in PIO mode. Switch to DMA mode (hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda) and see if it gets any better. Erik -- +-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 -- | Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands