Bug 1959 - procinfo -d -n1 gets FP exceptions
Summary: procinfo -d -n1 gets FP exceptions
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Raw Hide
Classification: Retired
Component: procinfo
Version: 1.0
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Michael K. Johnson
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 1999-04-03 03:00 UTC by Chris Siebenmann
Modified: 2008-05-01 15:37 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-08-27 14:46:08 UTC
Embargoed:


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Description Chris Siebenmann 1999-04-03 03:00:55 UTC
procinfo-16-3's procinfo gets FP exceptions sometimes
when run with '-d -n1' on a dual-CPU machine. What seems
to do it is running something with heavy CPU usage on
both CPUs (such as the distributed.net rc5des client).
If you run it for a while and wait, boom, there it goes.
I have not tested this behavior on a UP kernel.

 This is running with the latest Rawhide (although it
happened both under the Rawhide SMP kernel and under
stock 2.2.5-ac3).

Comment 1 Chris Siebenmann 1999-04-04 00:47:59 UTC
The root cause of this seems to be that raw idle time number
in /proc/stat occasionally blips backwards (!), with a ripple
through effect on procinfo, which assumes it always goes forward.

 I'm not sure how this is possible, but the idle number is not
a kstat variable but is instead worked out by subtracting all
the other time ticks (kernel, user, nice) from elapsed jiffies
(times the number of cpus). Possibly there is some update ordering
issues there, especially with multiple cpus and IRQs coming in at
just the wrong time on the 'other' cpu.

 I will be asking the gurus. In the mean time, there is an obvious
patch that can be made to the code in procinfo that reads /proc/stat
(just check if new.cpu_idle < old.cpu_idle and make them equal if
so).

Comment 2 Preston Brown 1999-08-27 14:46:59 UTC
fixed in procinfo-17-1, available in the next release.  However, as
this seems to be a kernel bug, I also certainly hope that it has been
corrected in a later release of the kernel as well.


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