Sander van Vugt wrote: > I notices something I don't understand in the vmstat -s output. In other > Linux distributions I know, the amount of interrupts is always much > higher than the amount of context switches. As far as I know, that from > the operating system perspective is also what you would expect, as a > context switch needs a timer interrupt to do its work. Now when I do > vmstat -s on Ubuntu Server 8.04, the amount of context switches is about > 5 times as high as the amount of interrupts, where I would expect the > exact opposite. Can anyone explain this? Is this a specific Ubuntu feature?
I believe this is due to the new tickless kernel feature (CONFIG_NO_HZ). There is no periodic timer interrupts at HZ interval anymore; timer interrupts happen only if scheduled (with sleep(), for example). This is supposed to reduce CPU power consumption. -- Etienne Goyer, Senior Ubuntu System Support Analyst Ubuntu Certified Instructor Canonical, Ltd -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
