Skip to contentSkip to conversation

Scheduler starvation (2.5.x, 2.6.0-test1)

DISCUSSION Tom Felker 6 participants 8 messages Jul 22, 2003 1 message not in the archive

lore
Share & tools
lore

A message that is not in the archive (sent off-list or not yet received): [email protected]

Tom Felker

author
#1 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · Simon Kirby

Is anybody else seeing this or is it something to do with my setup here?

Simon-

I see this too, on a much faster system. My browsing habit is to open a link in a new tab, and immediately click on that tab. The mouse gets noticeably jumpy right after clicking the link. I may be jaded by my 2.4.20-gentoo kernel which never did this, but still...

My system is a 2.4 GHz P4 running Gentoo, 2.6.0-test1 (tainted with nVidia), and Mozilla Firebird, with a USB mouse.

Signature · 3 lines
Tom Felker

Alchemists became chemists when they stopped keeping secrets.
#2 lore raw

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:14:46 -0500
Tom Felker <[email protected]> bubbled:

Quoted 6 lines · Simon Kirby
Quoted 4 lines

Is anybody else seeing this or is it something to do with my setup here?

Simon-

Quoted 7 lines

I see this too, on a much faster system. My browsing habit is to open a link in a new tab, and immediately click on that tab. The mouse gets noticeably jumpy right after clicking the link. I may be jaded by my 2.4.20-gentoo kernel which never did this, but still...

My system is a 2.4 GHz P4 running Gentoo, 2.6.0-test1 (tainted with nVidia), and Mozilla Firebird, with a USB mouse.

I have the same problem with 2.6.0-t1-ac2. If I minimize a window, my xmms hangs for a few ms. Same if I browse on some pages and go back/forward.
The screen/windows also fills/draws a little bit slow. (well, could be a X/nvidia problem)

I changed back to 2.4.22-p7 and everything works fine.

Regards,
Martin

ps.:
my machine: P4 2.4Ghz, 512Mb ram, Gentoo, nvidia driver, mozilla 1.4

Signature · 7 lines
MyExcuse:
Power company testing new voltage spike (creation) equipment

Martin Zwickel <[email protected]>
Research & Development

TechnoTrend AG <http://www.technotrend.de>
#3 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines · Martin Zwickel

I have the same problem with 2.6.0-t1-ac2. If I minimize a window, my xmms hangs for a few ms. Same if I browse on some pages and go back/forward.
The screen/windows also fills/draws a little bit slow. (well, could be a X/nvidia problem)

I changed back to 2.4.22-p7 and everything works fine.

Could you please test 2.6.0-test1-mm2? It includes some scheduler fixes from Con Kolivas that will help in reducing or eliminating your starvation issues.

Thank you very much!

#4 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · Felipe Alfaro Solana

Could you please test 2.6.0-test1-mm2? It includes some scheduler fixes from Con Kolivas that will help in reducing or eliminating your starvation issues.

I was having the same jumpy mouse behaviuor with 2.6.0-test1, and on an otherwise idle Pentium III at 600 MHz box, scrolling a very simple HTML page in Mozilla makes xmms skip audio.

Then I tried 2.6.0-test1-mm2, and several things happened: now scrolling an HTML page in Mozilla seems not to affect MP3 playback with XMMS, but this is the only possitive effect. Focusing windows raises them way slower than in 2.6.0-test1, scheduler starvation is constant (just try to do something like going to another virtual desktop), and then, after several minutes, only XMMS got CPU time, the rest of the applications (at least, those running over X-Window) get stalled.

Hope this helps.

Signature · 2 lines
Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Linux Registered User #189436     Debian Linux Sid (Linux 2.6.0-test1)
#5 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Quoted 4 lines · Felipe Alfaro Solana

Could you please test 2.6.0-test1-mm2? It includes some scheduler fixes from Con Kolivas that will help in reducing or eliminating your starvation issues.

I was having the same jumpy mouse behaviuor with 2.6.0-test1, and on an otherwise idle Pentium III at 600 MHz box, scrolling a very simple HTML page in Mozilla makes xmms skip audio.

Quoted 7 lines

Then I tried 2.6.0-test1-mm2, and several things happened: now scrolling an HTML page in Mozilla seems not to affect MP3 playback with XMMS, but this is the only possitive effect. Focusing windows raises them way slower than in 2.6.0-test1, scheduler starvation is constant (just try to do something like going to another virtual desktop), and then, after several minutes, only XMMS got CPU time, the rest of the applications (at least, those running over X-Window) get stalled.

Yes, I get the same thing with KDE 3.1. Are you using KDE or Gnome? And if so, what version?

#6 lore raw
Quoted 3 lines · Mike Fedyk

Yes, I get the same thing with KDE 3.1. Are you using KDE or Gnome? And if so, what version?

Debian Sid KDE version 3.1.2 here, and xmms 1.2.7 and Mozilla 1.4 if that matters. I'll try to do some additional test, time permitting.

Regards,

Signature · 2 lines
Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Linux Registered User #189436     Debian Linux Sid (Linux 2.6.0-test1)
#7 lore raw
In reply to Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Quoted 8 lines · Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Quoted 4 lines

Could you please test 2.6.0-test1-mm2? It includes some scheduler fixes from Con Kolivas that will help in reducing or eliminating your starvation issues.

I was having the same jumpy mouse behaviuor with 2.6.0-test1, and on an otherwise idle Pentium III at 600 MHz box, scrolling a very simple HTML page in Mozilla makes xmms skip audio.

Quoted 7 lines

Then I tried 2.6.0-test1-mm2, and several things happened: now scrolling an HTML page in Mozilla seems not to affect MP3 playback with XMMS, but this is the only possitive effect. Focusing windows raises them way slower than in 2.6.0-test1, scheduler starvation is constant (just try to do something like going to another virtual desktop), and then, after several minutes, only XMMS got CPU time, the rest of the applications (at least, those running over X-Window) get stalled.

We know there are still some issues and we need help from people like you. It's testing from a big enough user population what allows us to fix things that don't work as expected :-)

If you can, please, keem trying/testing/using the -mm series of the kernel. Con Kolivas is dedicating a lot of effort on the scheduler issus, and I wouldn't like this effort to be useless in the end.

Thanks!

#8 lore raw
In reply to Felipe Alfaro Solana
Quoted 3 lines · El 22 Jul 2003 20:41:42 +0200 Felipe Alfaro Solana…

Could you please test 2.6.0-test1-mm2? It includes some scheduler fixes from Con Kolivas that will help in reducing or eliminating your starvation issues.

BTW, if/when you've some free time, you could try 2.5.63. It has the best linux scheduler i've never tried! (for my workload, of course)

It'd be interesting to try to know what has changed since then.