[gentoo-user] One of my cores sometimes sleeps

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

Now this is _really_ annoying. My new PC has a AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core 
Processor 4850e CPU, but sometimes one of the cores stops to do things for a 
while. I think. It happens many times per day, sometimes every minute, 
sometimes I do not notice it four hours. It seems that only new tasks are 
affected, like when amarok starts a new song. Most KDE4 itself is always 
responsive, but not the panel. Konqueror, Kontact and such sometimes freeze 
when I open a new page/mail. In race cases konqueror also freezes while 
displaying a page, after parts were already rendered.
Sometimes gkrellm stops when this happens, sometimes it continues running, 
then I see the upper CPU with zero load. That's how I noticed it apparently 
has to do with one of the cores. When it happens and I call the top command, 
nothing happens, apparently because top needs to access both cores.

After a couple of seconds, sometimes as long as 1-2 minutes, execution is 
resumed, and all the things that did not happen while I clicked around now 
happen.

I have no idea what this could be. Googling did not find anything, maybe I 
am using the wrong keywords - many people have problems with freezing cores, 
but in their case the whole system freezes and needs a reset, while mine 
only takes a little nap and is just working happily afterwards. If noone has 
an idea, I might create a new kernel with .config settings from GRML or 
such, but I'd hate do do so, because I was happy to get a working system at 
all after lots of troubles, mainly with the video card. Just in case someone 
has an idea, my kernel .config is here:
http://wonkology.org/~wonko/tmp/linux-2.6.28-tuxonice-r3.config

I'd be thankful for every help I can get with this problem. I'm soo happy 
with my new system (great speed compared to the old PC, shiny new KDE4, 
encryption of everything), if only it wouldn't make these pauses every now 
and then.

	Wonko