Re: Why kmem_cache_free occupy CPU for more than 10 seconds?

From: Ken Chen
Date: Wed Apr 11 2007 - 12:36:21 EST


On 4/11/07, Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 17:53 +0800, Zhao Forrest wrote:
> I got some new information:
> Before soft lockup message is out, we have:
> [root@nsgsh-dhcp-149 home]# cat /proc/slabinfo |grep buffer_head
> buffer_head 10927942 10942560 120 32 1 : tunables 32
> 16 8 : slabdata 341955 341955 6 : globalstat 37602996 11589379
> 1174373 6 0 1 6918 12166031 1013708
> : cpustat 35254590 2350698 13610965 907286
>
> Then after buffer_head is freed, we have:
> [root@nsgsh-dhcp-149 home]# cat /proc/slabinfo |grep buffer_head
> buffer_head 9542 36384 120 32 1 : tunables 32 16
> 8 : slabdata 1137 1137 245 : globalstat 37602996 11589379
> 1174373 6 0 1 6983 20507478
> 1708818 : cpustat 35254625 2350704 16027174 1068367
>
> Does this huge number of buffer_head cause the soft lockup?

__blkdev_put() takes the BKL and bd_mutex
invalidate_mapping_pages() tries to take the PageLock

But no other looks seem held while free_buffer_head() is called

All these locks are preemptible (CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL?=y) and should not
hog the cpu like that, what preemption mode have you got selected?
(CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY?=y)

also, you can try this patch:

http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/7086e4b9d5504dc9/c608bfea4614b07e?lnk=gst&q=+Big+kernel+lock+contention+in+do_open&rnum=1#c608bfea4614b07e
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