From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 20 12:15:24 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B86D016A4CE for ; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:24 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail-gw0.york.ac.uk (mail-gw0.york.ac.uk [144.32.128.245]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0B4843D48 for ; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from buffy.york.ac.uk (buffy.york.ac.uk [144.32.226.160]) by mail-gw0.york.ac.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j0KCFCZV010559; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:12 GMT Received: from buffy.york.ac.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j0KCFBjc068691; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:11 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: (from ga9@localhost) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id j0KCFBCP068690; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:11 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) X-Authentication-Warning: buffy.york.ac.uk: ga9 set sender to gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk using -f From: Gavin Atkinson To: Bartosz Fabianowski In-Reply-To: <41EF0B1E.6010209@chillt.de> References: <41EF0B1E.6010209@chillt.de> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:10 +0000 Message-Id: <1106223310.68614.4.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.3 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-York-MailScanner-From: gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Persisting troubles with periodic stalls every few minutes X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:15:24 -0000 On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 02:36 +0100, Bartosz Fabianowski wrote: > Hi list, > > I have been having a lot of trouble with performance on my laptop, which > I first set up with 5.3-RELEASE and constantly keep up to date with > 5.3-STABLE. The box runs stable, but periodically, somewhere between > every few minutes down to every few seconds, it stalls for 5 seconds. By > that I mean that the screen is not being refreshed and all keyboard > strokes go into some kind of buffer to get processed when the stall is > over. Some key strokes also get lost or reversed in order, which makes > this even more annoying. > > The trouble is that I cannot figure out how to find the responsible > process. Tools such as top(1) update in one second intervals at best and > as there are no screen updates during the stall, so they produce nothing > useful. The only tool that gave me some kind of information was > systat(1). When I invoke "systat -vmstat 1", I see the following: Try running top with the -q option, and/or pressing space (which causes top to try and refresh immediately). If you still can't get any screen updates to happen during the freeze, try top -qbSs 1 -d max > /var/tmp/somefile And look through the file to see if you can establish what was actually happening at the time of the freeze. Gavin