From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040922 Description of problem: The system is constantly probing for a non-existent floppy drive. It also continually connects and disconnects my (connected) USB printer. The resulting CPU load severely degrades all application responsiveness, delaying mouse and keyboard events, and making them almost unusable. The log messages every 10 seconds or so are filling up the message log. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install FC2. 2. With or without updates (current at this date) applied. 3. I.E. Nothing special has been done to the system. Additional info: Here's a section from /var/log/messages: Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of SG_IO on the actual device Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of SG_IO on the actual device Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost kernel: inserting floppy driver for 2.6.8-1.521 Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost kernel: floppy0: Unable to grab IRQ6 for the floppy driver Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting floppy (/lib/modules/2.6.8-1.521/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko): Device or resource busy Sep 29 15:25:09 localhost kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using address 47 Sep 29 15:25:10 localhost kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 47 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04A9 pid 0x1088 Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting floppy (/lib/modules/2.6.8-1.521/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko): Device or resource busy Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: usb 1-3: USB disconnect, address 47 Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: removed Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of SG_IO on the actual device Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of SG_IO on the actual device Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: inserting floppy driver for 2.6.8-1.521 Sep 29 15:25:16 localhost kernel: floppy0: Unable to grab IRQ6 for the floppy driver Sep 29 15:25:17 localhost kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using address 48 Sep 29 15:25:18 localhost kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 48 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04A9 pid 0x1088 Sep 29 15:25:23 localhost kernel: usb 1-3: USB disconnect, address 48 Sep 29 15:25:23 localhost kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: removed The IRQ6 referred to above is actually associated with my onboard network device. From /proc/interrupts: 6: 232858 XT-PIC uhci_hcd, eth0 Running the gnome-system-monitor shows khelper spawning 2 or 3 high priority (-10 niceness) 'sh' processes at the same time that responsiveness degrades (at from 5 to 15 second intervals). I assume these are hotplug shell scripts starting up. I've marked the 'severity' as 'High' because user interaction is severely disrupted and some applications that otherwise work fine are unusable.
Created attachment 104508 [details] Output from ps showing hotplug processes The system is an Intel Pentium 5 2.4GHz and it does appear to be the hotplug scripts shown running at niceness -10 that are degrading responsiveness. I haven't worked out why multiple usb.agent scripts need to run concurrently.
'install floppy /bin/true' in /etc/modprobe.conf will fix the floppy errors. As to why you're getting constant connect/disconnects from the USB printer, that sounds more like a kernel issue.
Problem fixed! Thanks for the clue re kernel problem - I'm not familiar with how this all plays together. I rechecked the BIOS settings and set 'Plug & Play OS' = 'Yes', which appears to fix both problems (floppy module load attempt and USB printer connect/disconnect). The motherboard is an ASUS P4G8X series, and factory default P&P OS setting is 'No'. I also wasn't sure if Linux was Plug&Play compatible, so left the default setting alone when I originally set it up. The machine is dual-boot with Windows 2000, which appears to work fine with BIOS P&P=No. Red Hat 9 didn't appear to have problems initially either, although it did start losing the USB printer after an update at one stage if I recall correctly.