Ubuntu

Load of about 10 without any running tasks on 8x DualCore Opteron

Asked by JoergMechnich

We are experiencing a displayed system load of 9-10 on our newly bought 8x DualCore Opteron Sun server which is running Ubuntu Dapper with kernel 2.6.15-27-amd64-server without any CPU intensive task running. After spawning stress -c 16, the load rises to about 26 which seems to reflect the 16 running threads. The problem is independent of the usage of PowerNow, which was initially deactivated in the BIOS.
I suspect this to be a bug inside the kernel but could not find any information on others having similar problems.

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JoergMechnich (joerg-mechnich) said : 		#1

After running 'ps axr' the reason for our problem became obvious:
  PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
 4355 ? D< 0:05 [usb-storage]
11484 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11487 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11488 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11499 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11502 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11505 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11509 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11512 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11516 ? D 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-storage
11550 pts/3 R+ 0:00 ps axr

which led me to Ubuntu Bug #58935.
I had to remove the filters which result in running hald-addon-storage from both /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi and /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/20-storage-methods.fdi which means that hald-addon-storage now is not started at all.

With this workaround the load is down to 0 again but I assume I am not able to use PnP with external storage devices.

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Benjamin Goodger (goodgerster-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

> With this workaround the load is down to 0 again but I assume I am not able to use PnP with external storage devices.

Correct.
Background CPU use is not a problem until it cuts into your e.g. SQL server's cycles, so I would have left this alone, but this will solve it.

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