Since 2.6.11 the kernel hangs randomly for short periods of time, even on light load. Only under no load at all it works fluently. I marked [*] preemptive kernel and [*] preempt the big kernel lock. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. emerge --info Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/x86/2004.3, gcc-3.4.3, glibc-2.3.4.20050125-r0, 2.6.11-gentoo-r3 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.11-gentoo-r3 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.9 Python: dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1 [2.3.4 (#2, Feb 11 2005, 02:11:03)] dev-lang/python: 2.3.4-r1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.59-r6, 2.13 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.5, 1.4_p6, 1.6.3, 1.9.4 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r2 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.10-r4 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.8.1-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/gentoo/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X X509 acpi alsa apm arts artswrappersuid avi bash-completion berkdb bidi bitmap-fonts bzlib cddb cdparanoia cdr crypt ctype cups curl dga divx4linux doc dpms emboss encode foomaticdb ftp gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk2 gtkhtml hal i8x0 icq imagemagick imlib jpeg jpeg2k kde kdeenablefinal libg++ libwww mad mikmod mono mozilla moznocompose moznoirc moznomail mp3 mpeg msn ncurses nls nomotif nowin nptl offensive opengl pam pdflib perl pic png python qt readline real sdl slang spell sse sse2 ssl svga tcpd tetex threads truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode xine xml xml2 xv xvid zlib video_cards_i915 linguas_he" Unset: ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS
Created attachment 53406 [details] my kernel configuration
Please elaborate on what you mean by "the kernel hangs". I don't think kernel preemption is along the same lines as what you are thinking.
As far as I understand, and please correct me if I am wrong, preemptiveness is a deal about responsiveness, and ensuring that processes interacting with the user will run fluently. My kernel does not hang for long periods of time, but: a. It is not responsive anymore. It may take a second and sometimes more until the kernel responds to a mouse click or keyboard press if it is under moderate load. b. Applications do not run fluently. That is, animations are not smooth etc.
I think you are thinking of general preemption. Kernel preemption is something different. You should attach the output of dmesg and post the output of hdparm -d /dev/hda where hda is your primary hard disk. When the system is not responding to your mouse click, can you move the mouse at all?
No. the mouse does not move as well. I don't understand why the hell the kernel does not use DMA on my hard drive... # hdparm -d /dev/hda /dev/hda: using_dma = 0 (off) dmesg: Linux version 2.6.11-gentoo-r3 (root@lightstar) (gcc version 3.4.3 20041125 (Gentoo Linux 3.4.3-r1, ssp-3.4.3-0, pie-8.7.7)) #1 Sun Mar 13 23:26:29 IST 2005 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable) BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fe40000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 000000000fe40000 - 000000000fe50000 (ACPI data) BIOS-e820: 000000000fe50000 - 000000000ff00000 (ACPI NVS) 254MB LOWMEM available. On node 0 totalpages: 65088 DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1 Normal zone: 60992 pages, LIFO batch:14 HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1 DMI 2.3 present. ACPI: RSDP (v000 ACPIAM ) @ 0x000f74c0 ACPI: RSDT (v001 INTEL D845GBV 0x20020605 MSFT 0x00000097) @ 0x0fe40000 ACPI: FADT (v002 INTEL D845GBV 0x20020605 MSFT 0x00000097) @ 0x0fe40200 ACPI: MADT (v001 INTEL D845GBV 0x20020605 MSFT 0x00000097) @ 0x0fe40300 ACPI: DSDT (v001 INTEL D845GBV 0x0000010a MSFT 0x0100000d) @ 0x00000000 ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000 ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x00] enabled) Processor #0 15:2 APIC version 20 ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x01] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0]) IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 1, version 32, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23 ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl) ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 9 high level) ACPI: IRQ0 used by override. ACPI: IRQ2 used by override. ACPI: IRQ9 used by override. Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 1 I/O APICs Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information Allocating PCI resources starting at 0ff00000 (gap: 0ff00000:f0100000) Built 1 zonelists Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=2611 ro root=302 mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000) mapped IOAPIC to ffffc000 (fec00000) Initializing CPU#0 PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 10, 16384 bytes) Detected 1799.836 MHz processor. Using tsc for high-res timesource Console: colour VGA+ 80x25 Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes) Memory: 254708k/260352k available (1838k kernel code, 5184k reserved, 804k data, 136k init, 0k highmem) Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok. Calibrating delay loop... 3547.13 BogoMIPS (lpj=1773568) Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) CPU: After generic identify, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K CPU: L2 cache: 512K CPU: After all inits, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000000 00000000 Intel machine check architecture supported. Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0. CPU0: Intel P4/Xeon Extended MCE MSRs (12) available CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz stepping 04 Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done. Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done. Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs ..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=-1 NET: Registered protocol family 16 PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0031, last bus=1 PCI: Using configuration type 1 mtrr: v2.0 (20020519) ACPI: Subsystem revision 20050211 ACPI: Interpreter enabled ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (00:00) PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00) PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:1f.1 PCI: Transparent bridge - 0000:00:1e.0 ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.P0P1._PRT] ACPI: Power Resource [URP1] (off) ACPI: Power Resource [FDDP] (off) ACPI: Power Resource [LPTP] (off) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs *3 4 5 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 3 4 5 7 *9 10 11 12 14 15) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 *5 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled. ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled. ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled. ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 *10 11 12 14 15) SCSI subsystem initialized usbcore: registered new driver usbfs usbcore: registered new driver hub PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing ** PCI interrupts are no longer routed automatically. If this ** causes a device to stop working, it is probably because the ** driver failed to call pci_enable_device(). As a temporary ** workaround, the "pci=routeirq" argument restores the old ** behavior. If this argument makes the device work again, ** please email the output of "lspci" to bjorn.helgaas@hp.com ** so I can fix the driver. inotify device minor=63 Initializing Cryptographic API Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones agpgart: Detected an Intel 845G Chipset. agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 202M agpgart: Detected 892K stolen memory. agpgart: AGP aperture is 128M @ 0xf0000000 [drm] Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [drm] Initialized i915 1.1.0 20040405 on minor 0: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF] ACPI: Sleep Button (CM) [SLPB] ACPI: Processor [CPU1] (supports 8 throttling states) serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1 Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 8 ports, IRQ sharing disabled ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0 io scheduler noop registered io scheduler anticipatory registered io scheduler deadline registered io scheduler cfq registered PPP generic driver version 2.4.2 Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2 ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx Probing IDE interface ide0... hda: WDC WD800JB-00FMA0, ATA DISK drive Probing IDE interface ide1... hdc: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-152L, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive hdd: CR-48XCTE, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive Probing IDE interface ide2... Probing IDE interface ide3... Probing IDE interface ide4... Probing IDE interface ide5... ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 hda: max request size: 128KiB hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63 hda: cache flushes supported hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 hdd: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache usbcore: registered new driver usblp drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: v0.13: USB Printer Device Class driver Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage USB Mass Storage support registered. Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.8 (Thu Jan 13 09:39:32 2005 UTC). ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.5 to 64 intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 49238 usecs intel8x0: clocking to 48000 ALSA device list: #0: Intel 82801DB-ICH4 with AD1981A at 0xffa7f800, irq 17 NET: Registered protocol family 2 IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes TCP established hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes) TCP bind hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192) NET: Registered protocol family 1 ReiserFS: hda2: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal ReiserFS: hda2: using ordered data mode ReiserFS: hda2: journal params: device hda2, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30 ReiserFS: hda2: checking transaction log (hda2) ReiserFS: hda2: Using r5 hash to sort names VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 136k freed Adding 1004016k swap on /dev/hda1. Priority:-1 extents:1 USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.0 to 64 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 16, io base 0xe800 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.1[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.1 to 64 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0xe880 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.2[C] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.2 to 64 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0xec00 uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[D] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB 2.0 EHCI Controller PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.7 to 64 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, pci mem 0xffa7fc00 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4 PCI: cache line size of 128 is not supported by device 0000:00:1d.7 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 initialized, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004 hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 4-0:1.0: 6 ports detected hw_random hardware driver 1.0.0 loaded usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 2 usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 HDLC line discipline: version $Revision: 4.8 $, maxframe=4096 N_HDLC line discipline registered. usb 2-1: usbfs: process 7739 (eciadsl-firmwar) did not claim interface 0 before use usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 3 usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4 usb 2-1: usbfs: process 7805 (eciadsl-pppoeci) did not claim interface 0 before use mtrr: base(0xf0020000) is not aligned on a size(0x800000) boundary
This is what I got when I tried to enable DMA: # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda /dev/hda: setting using_dma to 1 (on) HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted using_dma = 0 (off)
Your problem is almost certainly DMA. You appear to have completely disabled PCI IDE support in your kernel: # CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI is not set As well as that you need to set the options which enable DMA (on by default) plus support for the IDE chipset on your motherboard (probably not on by default, depends on your hardware, check with lspci)
