I'm seeing serious interactivity problems in 2.5.65, 2.5.66, 2.5.65-mm4
and 2.5.64-bk2.
I couldn't reproduce it on 2.5.64, 2.5.64-bk1.
I noticed that when I was archiving a directory with some CD ISO images
with tar & bzip2. After a while (~5 minutes) many programs took a long
time to respond, XMMS paused for several seconds, starting simple
programs (mc, ps, ls) took sometimes even 40s. Disk is idle most of the
time.
To reproduce I wrote a simple script:
#!/bin/sh
cat cedo.iso | bzip2 > /tmp/cedo.iso.bz2 &
for i in `seq 1 20`; do
sleep 30
date
ps x
date
echo -----
done
... where cedo.iso is a 700MB CD ISO image.
When run on 2.5.64-bk2 (and no X running) I've got this output:
Wed Mar 26 10:47:50 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 R 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 0:33 bzip2
720 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:47:50 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:48:22 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 1:05 bzip2
724 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:48:23 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:48:55 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 1:38 bzip2
728 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:48:55 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:49:28 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 2:10 bzip2
732 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:49:28 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:50:01 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 2:42 bzip2
736 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:50:01 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:50:34 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 3:15 bzip2
740 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:50:34 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:51:06 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 3:47 bzip2
744 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:51:06 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:51:39 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:00 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 4:19 bzip2
748 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:51:39 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:52:12 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 4:52 bzip2
752 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:52:12 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:52:45 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 5:24 bzip2
756 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:52:45 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:53:17 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 5:57 bzip2
760 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:53:17 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:53:50 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 6:29 bzip2
764 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:53:50 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:54:23 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 7:01 bzip2
768 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:54:23 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:54:56 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 D 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 S 7:41 bzip2
772 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:55:03 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:55:45 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 D 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 S 8:50 bzip2
776 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:56:13 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:56:50 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 R 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 S 0:01 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 R 9:27 bzip2
780 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:56:50 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:57:23 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 D 0:02 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 S 10:23 bzip2
784 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:57:47 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:58:29 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 D 0:02 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 S 11:09 bzip2
788 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:58:33 CET 2003
-----
Wed Mar 26 10:59:19 CET 2003
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
325 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
713 tty2 S 0:00 /bin/sh ./test-interactivity.sh
714 tty2 S 0:00 tee inter-2.5.64bk2.log
715 tty2 D 0:02 cat cedo.iso
716 tty2 S 11:59 bzip2
792 tty2 R 0:00 ps x
Wed Mar 26 10:59:24 CET 2003
-----
(I interrupted the script here)
You can see that after less then 8 minutes running date, ps, and date
again takes a very long time. When this happens, ps shows cat process in
D-state and bzip2 in S-state.
I use Debian Woody on UP Athlon 800MHz, Asus A7V, 384MB RAM, disk WDC
WD800JB-00CRA1 connected to on-board Promise 20265, nVidia Geforce2 MX,
Realtek RTL-8139C, SB Live.
GCC is 2.95.4.
Let me know if you want me to provide more information/testing.
Michal Schmidt.
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