From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1761009AbZLJQ3T (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:29:19 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1760970AbZLJQ3T (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:29:19 -0500 Received: from mpc-26.sohonet.co.uk ([193.203.82.251]:60743 "EHLO moving-picture.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756402AbZLJQ3S (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:29:18 -0500 Message-ID: <4B2121E2.2030900@moving-picture.com> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:29:22 +0000 From: James Pearson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040524 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: High load average on idle machine running 2.6.32 References: <4B1D8C5D.9040900@moving-picture.com> In-Reply-To: <4B1D8C5D.9040900@moving-picture.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Disclaimer: This email and any attachments are confidential, may be legally X-Disclaimer: privileged and intended solely for the use of addressee. If you X-Disclaimer: are not the intended recipient of this message, any disclosure, X-Disclaimer: copying, distribution or any action taken in reliance on it is X-Disclaimer: strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received X-Disclaimer: this message in error, please notify the sender and delete all X-Disclaimer: copies from your system. X-Disclaimer: X-Disclaimer: Email may be susceptible to data corruption, interception and X-Disclaimer: unauthorised amendment, and we do not accept liability for any X-Disclaimer: such corruption, interception or amendment or the consequences X-Disclaimer: thereof. Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org James Pearson wrote: > I've booted a 64 bit 2.6.32 kernel on dual processor, quad core Xeon > E5440 machine. The load average when the machine is idle varies between > 2 and 3. > > When using a 2.6.31 kernel on the same machine, the load average when > idle is nearly 0 > > The kernel doesn't use modules - all that is needed is compiled in. The > machine uses NFS-root > > Strangely, when I run 'iftop' (from http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/) > using the 2.6.32 kernel, the load average drops to below 0.5 - stop > running iftop, and the load average climbs again ... > > Any idea what might be causing this? It looks like whatever is causing this happened between 2.6.31-git7 and 2.6.31-git8 - unfortunately I don't know how to find out what change caused this ... Also, if I 'hot-unplug' CPUs 1 to 7, the load average drops to 0 - when I re-enable theses CPUs, the load average climbs. I guess this is a problem with my particular config - or maybe because I'm using NFS-root (the root file system is readonly), or using a non-module kernel? Thanks James Pearson