6.3-PRERELEASE desktop system periodically freezes momentarily
Wayne Sierke
ws at au.dyndns.ws
Tue Jan 8 09:26:11 PST 2008
FreeBSD 6.3-PRERELEASE #5: Sat Dec 29 19:25:43 CST 2007 i386
I've noticed that this system is freezing periodically, for anywhere
from around a fraction of a second up to perhaps 1.5 seconds, and
occurring on average about twice a minute, but with no particular
pattern - i.e. it could happen twice in fairly quick succession, or not
for 40-50 seconds.
By running glxgears the problem is easily witnessed, also by maintaining
the mouse in constant motion, and it was originally noticed during
normal use when, e.g. the system momentarily becomes unresponsive to
keyboard input. I've now also witnessed it by running top with a delay
setting of zero and displaying system processes. The shorter delays are
not easily spotted but the longer delays are. This was seen both in a
terminal session and at a console.
Using top also revealed another interesting phenomenon - the 'top'
display freezes for very brief periods, probably less than 0.1s, but
quite regularly, at around once per second. Seeing this prompted me to
realise that glxgears stutters in what appears to be a corresponding
way. This behaviour (the freezing itself) is not entirely consistent,
either. Just while I've been writing these paragraphs I've noticed
glxgears' behaviour range from stuttering at around once per second, to
around twice per second, to not doing it (perceptibly) at all.
I now realise that I've actually witnessed this behaviour in glxgears
for quite some time, extending back into the distant history of this
system, which may include 6.0-RELEASE but would certainly include a few
different revisions in the 6.x series. It has been always
source-upgraded since the original install. I'd always just thought that
it was some hiccough in the graphics system.
Ports were recently upgraded so it is now running xorg-7.3_1,
gnome-2.20.2, nvidia-driver-96.43.01. The system has been up for 5 days
now and is quite loaded up with applications at the moment and is
normally left running. Currently it has running (on gnome): evolution,
firefox-devel (with some dozens of windows and tabs open), xmms, gimp,
xchat, eclipse-devel, gedit, a handful of terminal sessions. It's
running a custom kernel - mainly raid and unused network drivers removed
- mods listed below.
The hardware is a Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 motherboard (SiS), with a 2.4GHz
P4, 1.5GB DDR, nVidia MX440 AGP graphics, RTL-8139 network, AHA-2940
SCSI controller (for a scanner), 2 x 80GB ATA disks.
This system has also had a tendency at times to crash when switching VTs
between console and xorg. This problem has varied in consistency with
the different incarnations of OS and nvidia-driver versions and hasn't
yet occurred with this latest update.
I'd really appreciate any suggestions to help identify what's going on
here.
Thanks,
Wayne
diff of kernel config with GENERIC:
-# cpu I486_CPU
-# cpu I586_CPU
-# device eisa
-# device ataraid # ATA RAID drives
-# device atapifd # ATAPI floppy drives
-# device amr # AMI MegaRAID
-# device arcmsr # Areca SATA II RAID
-# device asr # DPT SmartRAID V, VI and Adaptec SCSI RAID
-# device ciss # Compaq Smart RAID 5*
-# device dpt # DPT Smartcache III, IV - See NOTES for options
-# device hptmv # Highpoint RocketRAID 182x
-# device hptrr # Highpoint RocketRAID 17xx, 22xx, 23xx, 25xx
-# device rr232x # Highpoint RocketRAID 232x
-# device iir # Intel Integrated RAID
-# device ips # IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID
-# device mly # Mylex AcceleRAID/eXtremeRAID
-# device twa # 3ware 9000 series PATA/SATA RAID
-# device aac # Adaptec FSA RAID
-# device aacp # SCSI passthrough for aac (requires CAM)
-# device ida # Compaq Smart RAID
-# device mfi # LSI MegaRAID SAS
-# device mlx # Mylex DAC960 family
-# device pst # Promise Supertrak SX6000
-# device twe # 3ware ATA RAID
-# device plip # TCP/IP over parallel
-# device cs # Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0 NIC
-# device ed # NE[12]000, SMC Ultra, 3c503, DS8390 cards
-# device ex # Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 and Pro/10+
-# device ep # Etherlink III based cards
-# device fe # Fujitsu MB8696x based cards
-# device ie # EtherExpress 8/16, 3C507, StarLAN 10 etc.
-# device lnc # NE2100, NE32-VL Lance Ethernet cards
-# device sn # SMC's 9000 series of Ethernet chips
-# device xe # Xircom pccard Ethernet
-# device ural # Ralink Technology RT2500USB wireless NICs
-# device firewire # FireWire bus code
-# device sbp # SCSI over FireWire (Requires scbus and da)
-# device fwe # Ethernet over FireWire (non-standard!)
# vmstat -i
interrupt total rate
irq1: atkbd0 256273 0
irq6: fdc0 8 0
irq14: ata0 4009537 8
irq15: ata1 2778519 6
irq16: nvidia0 18466724 41
irq18: pcm0 ahc0 325275270 727
irq19: rl0 4942307 11
irq20: ohci0 69879564 156
irq21: ohci1 993537 2
irq23: ehci0 1 0
cpu0: timer 894649288 2000
Total 1321251028 2953
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