Bug 31617 - [VM balance] top/ps/procinfo lock up under high load.
Summary: [VM balance] top/ps/procinfo lock up under high load.
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: kernel
Version: 7.1
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Michael K. Johnson
QA Contact: Brock Organ
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2001-03-13 03:05 UTC by Ed McKenzie
Modified: 2007-04-18 16:32 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2001-08-09 18:58:12 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
spawn.py (682 bytes, text/plain)
2001-06-12 02:51 UTC, Ed McKenzie
no flags Details

Description Ed McKenzie 2001-03-13 03:05:06 UTC
Under high load, top/ps/procinfo stop updating, while other applications
seem to keep running (slowly, of course.) top can lock up and stop updating
for two to three minutes at a time!  I would hope that psutils would be no
less responsive under load, as that's basically the only way to rescue a
box that is thrashing to death.

Comment 1 Glen Foster 2001-03-19 15:26:29 UTC
We (Red Hat) should really try to fix this before next release.

Comment 2 Arjan van de Ven 2001-03-27 16:16:30 UTC
A fix for this is in Linus kernel 2.4.3-pre8
Unfortionatly, this fix has caused major instabilities.
We're hoping to get a stable fix as soon as possible

Comment 3 Ed McKenzie 2001-06-12 02:42:52 UTC
I don't think 2.4.3 fixed it, as 2.4.5-0.2.9 is no better than the 7.1-release
kernel.

I've attached a python script to help demonstrate the problem.  Run this script
in one terminal and wait for it to stop spawning threads; after it's done, run a
ps aux in another terminal.  Alternately, if you have *alot* of patience, try
starting top in another terminal.

It's not nearly so bad under normal circumstances, but in any case ps and top
aren't very useful under high load.  FreeBSD does quite well on this test
compared to Linux 2.4.

Comment 4 Ed McKenzie 2001-06-12 02:51:18 UTC
Created attachment 20803 [details]
spawn.py

Comment 5 Ed McKenzie 2001-08-09 18:58:08 UTC
It turns out this problem is caused by VMA fragmentation in heavily threaded 
processes.  Watching ps output, there's a marked slowdown as it prints stats 
for threads.  glibc issue?  Kernel issue?  Who knows.  For now, don't run lots 
of threads on Linux ...


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