From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 8 17:13:27 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF75116A41F for ; Sun, 8 Jan 2006 17:13:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38E0343D46 for ; Sun, 8 Jan 2006 17:13:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 1582 invoked from network); 8 Jan 2006 17:13:26 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 8 Jan 2006 17:13:26 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 6ECD328420; Sun, 8 Jan 2006 12:13:25 -0500 (EST) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: Robert Huff References: <17342.49804.954553.276173@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <17342.53734.323371.384471@jerusalem.litteratus.org> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 08 Jan 2006 12:13:25 -0500 In-Reply-To: <17342.53734.323371.384471@jerusalem.litteratus.org> Message-ID: <44r77i3aoa.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 42 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hyperactive dhclient? 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: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 17:13:27 -0000 Robert Huff writes: > Normally, I expect dhclient to run at startup and then > disappear into the background. > Today - in the process of diagnosing other troubles - I ran > into this from top: > > last pid: 48344; load averages: 3.30, 2.85, 2.46 up 0+19:50:53 14:17:04 > 127 processes: 3 running, 122 sleeping, 1 zombie, 1 lock > CPU states: 42.4% user, 12.5% nice, 42.4% system, 2.7% interrupt, 0.0% idle > Mem: 146M Active, 22M Inact, 100M Wired, 2560K Cache, 60M Buf, 222M Free > Swap: 2048M Total, 310M Used, 1738M Free, 15% Inuse, 156K In > > PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND > 226 _dhcp 1 111 0 1528K 268K *Giant 31:04 12.74% dhclient > > > Now I assume "*Giant" means the Giant Lock ... which is another > thing I've never seen before. Not for dhclient, and not for > anything else. I don't think that tells you much other than that dhclient is waiting to acquire the giant lock. Which is probably for access to the network card -- my guess would be that you are using a NIC that hasn't been rewritten for fine-grained locking. > Gut reaction says this is not a good thing. On the other hand > my gut reaction has often been wrong. Is there a legitimate reason > for this much activity? If not, how do I figure out what's broken? > (I'm running > > FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT #0: Wed Jan 4 13:41:21 EST 20 > > but this is as much a question about dhcp as it is about > any particular version.) Hard to say. I'd start by looking at the traffic it's sending and receiving. A clue is likely to turn up there... -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/