Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Sat, 11 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: The fact that swap is in use, together with your description, indicates that your system is overloaded; those transient loads are causing it to periodically demand more working memory than is backed by RAM, so the system goes into a frenzy of swapping trying to accomodate, and system performance falls in the toilet until the load goes away. Add more RAM or limit the workload. Now that something to check - thank you very much Kris. Is that so that on a typical system with enough memory to do its job there is no swap use on average? From what I can tell swap is always used to some extent but I have checked another system and swap use there is 0%. So you may be right that this is the problem. Jonathan - what is your swap use? Cause you also experience this kind of problem... Thanks! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Saturday 11 November 2006 02:36, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, Jonathan - what is your swap use? Cause you also experience this kind of problem... Thanks! i have all my apps open that i typeically run, and i have 108K of swap in use (so not even 1 MB). my system is a p4 3.2HT with 1GB ram. i still havent had time to sit down and recompile my kernel with the ULE scheduler yet, but i will this weekend. cheers, jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 07:40:43AM -0600, Jonathan Horne wrote: On Saturday 11 November 2006 02:36, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, Jonathan - what is your swap use? Cause you also experience this kind of problem... Thanks! i have all my apps open that i typeically run, and i have 108K of swap in use (so not even 1 MB). my system is a p4 3.2HT with 1GB ram. i still havent had time to sit down and recompile my kernel with the ULE scheduler yet, but i will this weekend. Don't use ULE! I don't know where this bogus advice keeps coming from. Kris pgpAdI7LW45wX.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 09:36:25AM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, On Sat, 11 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: The fact that swap is in use, together with your description, indicates that your system is overloaded; those transient loads are causing it to periodically demand more working memory than is backed by RAM, so the system goes into a frenzy of swapping trying to accomodate, and system performance falls in the toilet until the load goes away. Add more RAM or limit the workload. Now that something to check - thank you very much Kris. Is that so that on a typical system with enough memory to do its job there is no swap use on average? From what I can tell swap is always used to some extent but I have checked another system and swap use there is 0%. So you may be right that this is the problem. There should be no significant swap use, although there might be a small amount (a few MB) in use. Certainly it should not change over time, because that indicates that the system needed to reshuffle things. Kris pgpBVgC7zmVfx.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
Dear Kris and others, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: OK, you'll need to do some more diagnosis along the lines of my previous email then. Here's my typical load: last pid: 96934; load averages: 0.03, 0.06, 0.05 up 29+20:47:07 10:16:09 68 processes: 1 running, 67 sleeping CPU states: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle Mem: 140M Active, 35M Inact, 103M Wired, 12M Cache, 41M Buf, 15M Free Swap: 512M Total, 127M Used, 385M Free, 24% Inuse Swap use is around 22%. This box mostly functions as mail server and there are times when it gets a lot of emails to send. The load goes higher then. The highest I recall (with no freeze mind you) was about 7.something. But typically it does not go above 1.5. -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Jonathan Horne wrote: any update on your freezing? i have the same problem from time to time, and ive considered changing to the other scheduler, but i never have. did you do it yet, and is there any difference? I checked some logs and see this: E 20061110 032156 1148 Error connecting to 192.168.11.51. E 20061110 032221 1148 Error connecting to 192.168.11.51. E 20061110 032246 1148 Error connecting to 192.168.11.51. which means FBSD was unavilable for at least 1 minute between 3:21 and 3:22 at night. Needles to say, I was not using tty at that time though at 3 we start sending quite a few emails (about 11K however they are fed in small batches over 2 hour period so the load is not too big). Is there any log in FBSD that I could turn on to get any feedback? -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On 09/11/2006 09:12, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, I am running FBSD 6-1 stable with custom kernel. Occasionally I experience short freezes - that is the machine stops to respond for a few seconds and then happily starts to work again. My general question is what log should I inspect or what debugging to turn on to have some more info on what really happens? It does seem to happen under bigger load (something like over 1) but I am not really sure if that is the cause. Yesterday it ran for three hours with an average load of over 2 and there was no freeze. Many thanks in advance for guiding me in troubleshooting the issue. Just a shot in the dark, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet: have you used any variables affecting kernel compilation, especially CPUTYPE, CFLAGS, COPTFLAGS? I remember seeing some strange effects when I messed with them too much (we've all been there, haven't we? ;) Karol -- Karol Kwiatkowski freebsd at orchid dot homeunix dot org OpenPGP: http://www.orchid.homeunix.org/carlos/gpg/0x06E09309.asc signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Karol Kwiatkowski wrote: Just a shot in the dark, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet: have you used any variables affecting kernel compilation, especially CPUTYPE, CFLAGS, COPTFLAGS? I remember seeing some strange effects when I messed with them too much (we've all been there, haven't we? ;) Thank you for this hint. I have checked the conf file. I do not have any of the options you mention. The only reference to CPU that I have is: cpu I686_CPU But that's probably too obvious, isn't it? BTW - I put your domain on a whitelist as your email to me was rejected by my MTA (sorry about that). Thank you again for your help! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On 11/10/06, Zbigniew Szalbot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Karol Kwiatkowski wrote: Just a shot in the dark, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet: have you used any variables affecting kernel compilation, especially CPUTYPE, CFLAGS, COPTFLAGS? I remember seeing some strange effects when I messed with them too much (we've all been there, haven't we? ;) Thank you for this hint. I have checked the conf file. I do not have any of the options you mention. The only reference to CPU that I have is: cpu I686_CPU the CPUTYPE, CFLAGS and COPTFLAGS are make.conf variables, not kernel config options. But that's probably too obvious, isn't it? BTW - I put your domain on a whitelist as your email to me was rejected by my MTA (sorry about that). Thank you again for your help! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello Andy, On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Andy Greenwood wrote: the CPUTYPE, CFLAGS and COPTFLAGS are make.conf variables, not kernel config options. Well, thank you. Shame but I wasn't even remotely aware of it! And for this reason these are all commented out. Thanks again! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On 10/11/2006 14:29, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Karol Kwiatkowski wrote: Just a shot in the dark, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet: have you used any variables affecting kernel compilation, especially CPUTYPE, CFLAGS, COPTFLAGS? I remember seeing some strange effects when I messed with them too much (we've all been there, haven't we? ;) Thank you for this hint. I have checked the conf file. I do not have any of the options you mention. The only reference to CPU that I have is: cpu I686_CPU But that's probably too obvious, isn't it? That's the kernel configuration. I686_CPU should be(?) fine on most i386 processors but you may check that. However I was asking about variables affecting the compilation process itself. Most of the time they're set in /etc/make.conf (If you're not sure make that file available via HTTP or post it's content to the list). BTW - I put your domain on a whitelist as your email to me was rejected by my MTA (sorry about that). Thank you again for your help! No problem, I'm used to that. It's a part of 'fun' when running a mail server on dynamic IP... HTH, Karol -- Karol Kwiatkowski freebsd at orchid dot homeunix dot org OpenPGP: http://www.orchid.homeunix.org/carlos/gpg/0x06E09309.asc signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 10:18:59AM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Dear Kris and others, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: OK, you'll need to do some more diagnosis along the lines of my previous email then. Here's my typical load: last pid: 96934; load averages: 0.03, 0.06, 0.05 up 29+20:47:07 10:16:09 68 processes: 1 running, 67 sleeping CPU states: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle Mem: 140M Active, 35M Inact, 103M Wired, 12M Cache, 41M Buf, 15M Free Swap: 512M Total, 127M Used, 385M Free, 24% Inuse Swap use is around 22%. This box mostly functions as mail server and there are times when it gets a lot of emails to send. The load goes higher then. The highest I recall (with no freeze mind you) was about 7.something. But typically it does not go above 1.5. The fact that swap is in use, together with your description, indicates that your system is overloaded; those transient loads are causing it to periodically demand more working memory than is backed by RAM, so the system goes into a frenzy of swapping trying to accomodate, and system performance falls in the toilet until the load goes away. Add more RAM or limit the workload. Kris pgpFyXLKrsbDK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
On 11/9/06, Zbigniew Szalbot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am running FBSD 6-1 stable with custom kernel. Occasionally I experience short freezes - that is the machine stops to respond for a few seconds and then happily starts to work again. kernels built with optionsSCHED_ULE Behave like that for me. -- -- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/9/06, Zbigniew Szalbot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am running FBSD 6-1 stable with custom kernel. Occasionally I experience short freezes - that is the machine stops to respond for a few seconds and then happily starts to work again. kernels built with optionsSCHED_ULE Behave like that for me. In my case I have SCHED_ULE commented out (probably by default I do not recall commenting it out myself): #optionsSCHED_ULE # ULE scheduler options SCHED_4BSD # 4BSD scheduler Thanks! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 09:12:06AM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, I am running FBSD 6-1 stable with custom kernel. Occasionally I experience short freezes - that is the machine stops to respond for a few seconds and then happily starts to work again. My general question is what log should I inspect or what debugging to turn on to have some more info on what really happens? It does seem to happen under bigger load (something like over 1) but I am not really sure if that is the cause. Yesterday it ran for three hours with an average load of over 2 and there was no freeze. Many thanks in advance for guiding me in troubleshooting the issue. Is your system swapping? Monitor with top, swapinfo, etc. Kris pgp4fLrGaVHfv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: Is your system swapping? Monitor with top, swapinfo, etc. I will take a more careful look in the course of next few days. The problem is that I access this box only via tty so when it does freeze I have no way to determine what really happens. Thanks! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 10:56:53PM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: Is your system swapping? Monitor with top, swapinfo, etc. I will take a more careful look in the course of next few days. The problem is that I access this box only via tty so when it does freeze I have no way to determine what really happens. How do you know the entire system is freezing instead of just the tty? :) If you have e.g. heavy disk write activity then the syncer will grab Giant while flushing periodically and delay other things that require Giant, like serial terminals. Kris pgp91osAmGRzV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: periodic, short freezes
Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: How do you know the entire system is freezing instead of just the tty? :) If you have e.g. heavy disk write activity then the syncer will grab Giant while flushing periodically and delay other things that require Giant, like serial terminals. I do not think that's the case. I have another box that works as a mail relay server that passes messages for exim under FBSD. Now when the freeze occurs, I check the relay server and it cannot connect to the FBSD box (both are on the same lan). That's why I think it is a general box freeze and not just a tty problem. Thanks! -- Zbigniew Szalbot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: periodic, short freezes
On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 11:29:51PM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: Hello, On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: How do you know the entire system is freezing instead of just the tty? :) If you have e.g. heavy disk write activity then the syncer will grab Giant while flushing periodically and delay other things that require Giant, like serial terminals. I do not think that's the case. I have another box that works as a mail relay server that passes messages for exim under FBSD. Now when the freeze occurs, I check the relay server and it cannot connect to the FBSD box (both are on the same lan). That's why I think it is a general box freeze and not just a tty problem. OK, you'll need to do some more diagnosis along the lines of my previous email then. Kris pgpZopJRF2k9z.pgp Description: PGP signature
