Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Beau Henderson <beau@××××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Constant Load 1.00+ on new Toshiba laptop
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:04:28
Message-Id: 955d685d0902181604w2c9648e3xc8488c9b5b417434@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Constant Load 1.00+ on new Toshiba laptop by Alan McKinnon
1 On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>wrote:
2
3 > On Thursday 19 February 2009 01:38:39 Beau Henderson wrote:
4 > > I've tried manually altering the governor to performance but its the same
5 > > story.
6 > >
7 > > The system doesn't appear sluggish, I'm really more concerned that
8 > > something is causing the load and this might lead to shorter battery life
9 > > and and more heat.
10 >
11 > Right in the beginning you said the load was *exactly* 1.00. Now, load is
12 > defined as
13 >
14 > "the _number_ of processes on average waiting for the cpu in the last 1, 5,
15 > 15
16 > minutes"
17 >
18 > So it does not mean that the cpu is necessarily working hard (but usually
19 > does) if the load is high. Yours is _exactly_ 1.00 (very suspicious)
20 >
21 > This is almost certainly one of two things:
22 >
23 > 1. A stupid kernel config that you should not have done :-)
24 > 2. Some app is blocking hard on IO
25 >
26 > I guess #2 - something waits for IO, it is not available, so immediately
27 > goes
28 > back to sleep waiting for it's next time slice. This happens many times a
29 > second and averaged over a minute looks like the cpu is constantly busy.
30 > Thus,
31 > no real extra cpu load is happening, the machine does not appear at all
32 > sluggish and the only harm is that it is annoying as hell.
33 >
34 > --
35 > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
36 >
37 >
38 >
39 Woah, now were getting somewhere.
40
41 After reading that, I had another look at the top output and noticed that a
42 single hald process was in D state. /etc/init.d/hald stop and the load is
43 lowering as I type. I'm going to have to dig into this deeper as time
44 permits.
45
46 Thanks everyone :)
47
48 --
49 Beau Dylan Henderson
50
51 "No human being should be denied the fundamental right to educate themselves
52 or indulge their curiosities. To deny any person the right to do so, for
53 whatever reason, is nothing more than the safeguarding of ignorance to
54 ensure that enlightenment does not become a threat. For nothing in this
55 world is more dangerous than an open mind." -- Matthew Good

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Constant Load 1.00+ on new Toshiba laptop Beau Henderson <beau@××××××××××××.com>