Interrupt latency problems

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <22333.1052574519 at critter.freebsd.dk>
            "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> writes:
: In message <1052570246.27195.6.camel at cf.freebsd-services.com>, Paul Richards wr
: ites:
: >I'm having real problems with current with heavy disk activity.
: >
: >When working in X and updating ports which causes a lot of disk activity
: >I get *very* poor interactive responses. Keypresses can not appear for
: >seconds and mouse movement is very jerky and unresponsive.
: >
: >I'm wondering if something is holding locks a long time in interrupt
: >handlers and causing mouse/keyboard interrupts to be lost?
: 
: We have this lock called "Giant" which we're trying to get rid off...

Actually, this may be a problem in the acpi code.  I have at least one
battery that causes my system to 'freeze' for a while.  The mouse
interrupts aren't lost, per se, but just deferred too long.  That was
before the latest acpi upgrade, and I've not tried the offending
battery since then (I think that the zero length messages are related
to querrying the battery status, but haven't booted windows to find
out for sure).

Warner