Bug 137996

Summary:	USB harddisk causes 100% cpu load when copying large files
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3	Reporter:	Thomas Uebermeier <uthomas>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Pete Zaitcev <zaitcev>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	3.0	CC:	lwoodman, news1, petrides, riel, tao
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2004-12-22 18:05:10 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Thomas Uebermeier 2004-11-03 17:59:56 UTC

Description of problem: 
 
when copying a large file to a USB harddisk, the CPU load goes up to 
100% (used by usb-storage-1) 
Small files or using an older kernel (2.4.21-15.0.4) does not show 
this behavior. 
 
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 
2.4.21-20 
 
How reproducible: 
Always. 
 
Steps to Reproduce: 
1. Attach USB storage device 
2. mount it 
3. copy a large file to the mounted device 
   
Actual results: 
system is stuck in 100% usage of usb-storage-1 
 
Expected results: 
 
 
Additional info: 
I know of the accuracy of "small" and "large" files :), but no 
testing was done where the threshold is.

Comment 3 Ernie Petrides 2004-11-03 21:39:25 UTC

There were VM changes in U4 that might address this.  Does this problem
occur with the U4 beta kernel (2.4.21-23.EL)?

Comment 4 Larry Woodman 2004-11-03 21:54:40 UTC

Thomas, please attach a "top" output and get several "AltSysrq W"
outputs when the system is in this state so I can see what process is
running and exactly what routines it is running.  Please use the
latest RHEL3-U4 kernel since we fixed a problem in prune_icache that
looks exactly like this.

That kernel is here: http://people.redhat.com/~lwoodman/RHEL3/

Larry Woodman

Comment 5 Dominique Mueller 2004-12-22 14:07:43 UTC

Hi, I am the customer who had this problem and Thomas created this 
bugreport for me. As I was unable to install the beta U4 Kernel I 
installed the U4 release today - and the problem is gone.

Thanks & many greetings
Dominique

Comment 7 Ernie Petrides 2004-12-23 01:27:57 UTC

An errata has been issued which should help the problem 
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being 
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files, 
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report 
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2004-550.html