Extreme console latency during disk IO (8.0-RC1, previous releases also affected according to others)

[Robert N. M. Watson]

On 13 Oct 2009, at 14:33, Ivan Voras wrote:

>> If (1) is highly variable during I/O, it's almost certainly a  
>> property of
>> the VM technology you're using, and there's nought to be done about  
>> it in
>> the guest OS.
>
> Here's an example of a ping session with 0.1s resolution during a few
> seconds-stall in ssh:
>
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=1576 ttl=64 time=0.383 ms
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=1577 ttl=64 time=0.405 ms
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=1578 ttl=64 time=0.360 ms
>
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=2304 ttl=64 time=4.194 ms
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=2305 ttl=64 time=0.454 ms
> 64 bytes from 161.53.72.188: icmp_seq=2306 ttl=64 time=0.376 ms
>
> note huge packet loss. It looks like it's VM fault or something like  
> it.

It sounds like the VM is failing to execute the guest during certain  
types of I/O. A bit of scheduler tracing in the host OS probably  
wouldn't go amiss to confirm that the VM really is suspending the  
guest at about the same time ICMP latency goes up. However, given the  
above I think I you can reasonable assume that the 4ms jump you're  
seeing there is due to global host OS/VM scheduling, and not FreeBSD  
scheduling.

Robert