Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Constant Load 1.00+ on new Toshiba laptop

[Dale]

Beau Henderson wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Beau Henderson
> <beau@××××××××××××.com <mailto:beau@××××××××××××.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Alan McKinnon
>     <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com <mailto:alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>> wrote:
>
>         On Thursday 19 February 2009 01:38:39 Beau Henderson wrote:
>         > I've tried manually altering the governor to performance but
>         its the same
>         > story.
>         >
>         > The system doesn't appear sluggish, I'm really more
>         concerned that
>         > something is causing the load and this might lead to shorter
>         battery life
>         > and and more heat.
>
>         Right in the beginning you said the load was *exactly* 1.00.
>         Now, load is
>         defined as
>
>         "the _number_ of processes on average waiting for the cpu in
>         the last 1, 5, 15
>         minutes"
>
>         So it does not mean that the cpu is necessarily working hard
>         (but usually
>         does) if the load is high. Yours is _exactly_ 1.00 (very
>         suspicious)
>
>         This is almost certainly one of two things:
>
>         1. A stupid kernel config that you should not have done :-)
>         2. Some app is blocking hard on IO
>
>         I guess #2 - something waits for IO, it is not available, so
>         immediately goes
>         back to sleep waiting for it's next time slice. This happens
>         many times a
>         second and averaged over a minute looks like the cpu is
>         constantly busy. Thus,
>         no real extra cpu load is happening, the machine does not
>         appear at all
>         sluggish and the only harm is that it is annoying as hell.
>
>         --
>         alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>
>
>     Woah, now were getting somewhere.
>
>     After reading that, I had another look at the top output and
>     noticed that a single hald process was in D state.
>     /etc/init.d/hald stop and the load is lowering as I type. I'm
>     going to have to dig into this deeper as time permits.
>
>     Thanks everyone :)
>
>
>     --
>     Beau Dylan Henderson
>
>     "No human being should be denied the fundamental right to educate
>     themselves or indulge their curiosities. To deny any person the
>     right to do so, for whatever reason, is nothing more than the
>     safeguarding of ignorance to ensure that enlightenment does not
>     become a threat. For nothing in this world is more dangerous than
>     an open mind." -- Matthew Good
>
>
>
> The culprit: Hals cdrom polling. Interestingly, the load shot down as
> soon as I stuck a disk.
>
> The fix: hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0 'hal'
> --
> Beau Dylan Henderson
>
> "No human being should be denied the fundamental right to educate
> themselves or indulge their curiosities. To deny any person the right
> to do so, for whatever reason, is nothing more than the safeguarding
> of ignorance to ensure that enlightenment does not become a threat.
> For nothing in this world is more dangerous than an open mind." --
> Matthew Good


I would never have guessed this was your problem but I had the same
thing happen on my DESKTOP puter a while back.  I hit the eject button,
closed the tray again, restarted hald and it went back to normal.  I
also had a TON of errors in messages too.  I have cron set up to rotate
messages so I may not have those now.

This may be a different cause but does make one wonder.  Also, it hasn't
done it since. 

Dale

:-)  :-)