From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 31 19:18:26 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A97C516A4E5 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:18:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee) Received: from mail.neti.ee (smtp-out-1.neti.ee [194.126.101.98]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48C6843D45 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:18:25 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee) Received: from [88.196.100.181] (88-196-100-181-dsl.trt.estpak.ee [88.196.100.181]) by Relayhost2.neti.ee (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA13C17483 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 22:18:23 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <44F735FE.1060402@raad.tartu.ee> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 22:18:22 +0300 From: Toomas Aas User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (X11/20060424) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@freebsd.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-2.2.1 (20041222) (Debian) at neti.ee Cc: Subject: Re: 6.1 kernel messages X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:18:26 -0000 up@3.am wrote: > Having just migrated a server from 4.10-STABLE to 6.1-STABLE, I'm curious > about some kernel messages in dmesg that I hadn't seen before: > > asr0: [GIANT-LOCKED] (adaptec RAID adapter) > uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED] (USB driver) > atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED] (keyboard driver) > > I'm running SMP with 2 CPUs...a quick google shows that some people think > it may be cause for concern but others do not. Is it? I don't think it's a problem - at least not a major problem that you need to lose sleep over, unless you're a kernel hacker. It just means that those particular drivers have not yet been updated to support fine-grained kernel locking and so the Giant lock is acquired on the entire kernel when these drivers run - meaning that other processes can't be serviced by the kernel at the same time. In FreeBSD 4.x this kind of message didn't exist because having only one process accessing the kernel at any one time was the *only* possibility back then. > Then there's this: > > acpi0: on motherboard > acpi0: Power Button (fixed) > acpi: bad write to port 0x070 (8), val 0x43 > acpi: bad read from port 0x071 (8) AFAIK this is FreeBSD telling you that your machine's BIOS is trying to access memory areas where it has no business going. I started seeing those messages on my 6.1-STABLE home box sometime in June this year and have been ignoring them. So far, nothing bad seems to have happened. Sorry for somewhat vague answers, but seeing as nobody has offered anything more scientific... -- Toomas Aas