Re: PROBLEM: tickless scheduling

From: Stefan Biereigel
Date: Sun May 16 2010 - 12:14:39 EST



Attached. This is from the 2.6.30 kernel on the Arch Linux install cd.

Here's another bit of data. As I've said previously, the problems I'm
reporting were observed on a Toshiba NB310-305 netbook with a
single-core Atom 450 processor. I just built myself a mini-ITX system
using the Intel D510MO motherboard, which provides a dual-core D510
Atom processor. The other hardware on the board is similar to the
Toshiba. I installed the same Slackware snapshot I used on the
Toshiba, and did the home directory transfer without any problem at
all with the default tickless kernel. The hardware isn't identical,
and while I don't know the internals of the Linux kernel at all, my
gut, backed up by many years of OS development work in scheduling and
memory management, is telling me that the key difference is dual- vs.
single-core. Just a guess.

Hope this helps --

/Don
Hello everyone,

I hope I can add something here, because I am experiencing the exact same Problem as Don describes. I'm running a PackardBell EasyNote MB89 featuring a Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, Intel Chipset (Santa Rosa), SATA HDD. My Machine even hangs at boot, absolutely doing nothing until i wiggle the touchpad. This is definately reproduceable, but I think it doesn't occur that often in X-Window-System, if X is off I can just wait a couple of seconds and there I go.

I compiled other kernels myself with tickless disabled and Ticks set to various values (250, 1000) which completely resolved my problem. If you want, I can get you some Output/logs/whatever because I'm fixed to using this kernel ATM (which doesn't really hurt because I use X and son't shut down my Notebook that often).
Even though I don't know what exact kernel-version this problem brings (using another machine ATM from vacation) I can say that I existed since Opensuse 11.1 I guess, so maybe 2.6.30 and above.

Hope I can help --

Stefan
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