From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 14 01:23:46 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A0B716A407 for ; Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:23:46 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B3B0A43E4B for ; Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:19:10 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from obsecurity.dyndns.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38A6A1A3C1C; Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:20:36 -0800 (PST) Received: by obsecurity.dyndns.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 7C76E5138F; Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:20:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:20:35 -0500 From: Kris Kennaway To: Dieter Message-ID: <20061214012035.GA62554@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <20061213232726.GA61149@xor.obsecurity.org> <200612140037.AAA14550@sopwith.solgatos.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="uAKRQypu60I7Lcqm" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200612140037.AAA14550@sopwith.solgatos.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: processes not getting fair share of available disk I/O 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, 14 Dec 2006 01:23:46 -0000 --uAKRQypu60I7Lcqm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 04:37:42PM +0000, Dieter wrote: > > > Is Giant the only mutex/lock that could be a bottleneck across disks? > >=20 > > The only one I can think of that is generic. One would have to do > > more extensive profiling and diagnosis to try and figure out what is > > wrong with your system. >=20 > Suggestions of what to look at would be welcome. Mutex profiling would show if there is a mutex somehow getting in the way of your I/O (e.g. if Giant is somehow being forced). I dont think it would show anything though. You can try to study interrupt issues (e.g. look for an interrupt storm during I/O) with vmstat -i. Other than that you'd probably have to get your hands dirtier in the code. > > The only explanation that seems to fit is that it's something to do > > with your particular hardware (i.e. driver issue), since it's > > certainly not a problem on general configurations. > >=20 > > I know that many people have bad things to say about nforce chipsets, > > although I dont know if your particular problem has been reported > > before. >=20 > Could APIC have anything to do with this? It is currently turned off in > firmware. Problems with interrupt delivery could certainly be relevant. > Today I experimented with vfs.hirunningspace. If I crank it up, I get > better total write speed with multiple drives doing dd from /dev/zero > to files on disks. But it doesn't help my real applications, and > in fact appears to hurt them. Yes, I don't expect there are any viable high-level workarounds for this issue at a lower layer. Kris --uAKRQypu60I7Lcqm Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFFgKbiWry0BWjoQKURAjUxAKCEkTc17uF19pOkUbQOghWASCkkygCfYLHT NqMrzYDBtv/q8Ujqt64xn/o= =WTDV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --uAKRQypu60I7Lcqm--