Re: 2.6.8-rc2-mm2, staircase sched and ESD

[Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>]

Con Kolivas wrote:

> Zan Lynx writes:
>
>> The 2.6.8-rc2-mm2 kernel has the staircase scheduler, right?  Well, I am
>> seeing an odd thing.  At least, I think it is odd.
>>
>> I'm running Fedora Core 2 and playing music with Rhythmbox.  When I
>> watch top sorted by priority, I see esd slowly increase its priority
>> until it reaches 38, then it goes back to 20.  ESD is only using 1-2%
>> CPU.
>>
>> This is causing a problem because doing just about anything in X, like
>> bring up a new window or drag a window causes the sound to just stop.
>>
>> Why does ESD's priority keep climbing?
>>
>> Oh yes, this does not happen if I change /proc/sys/fs/interactive to 
>> 0. When it is 0, X's priority climbs faster than ESDs and does not cause
>> the problem.
>
>
> Yes this is a known issue with esd. It basically wakes up far too 
> frequently for it's own good. esd should not be required with alsa 
> drivers and 2.6 since alsa supports sharing of the sound card / mixing 
> on it's own so adding esd adds an unnecessary layer to the sound 
> drivers. It ends up doing this:
> esd->oss emulation->alsa.
>

Even so, this would be a showstopper if we're talking about replacing 
the 2.6 scheduler,
wouldn't you agree?