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Date:      Thu, 16 Feb 2017 16:40:42 -0600
From:      Dustin Wenz <dustinwenz@ebureau.com>
To:        Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org>
Cc:        FreeBSD <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Jailed periodic daily scripts smashing CPU
Message-ID:  <46236914-07E5-4128-947E-E2EBD04542BE@ebureau.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAOtMX2hb%2BmoGWZFuUjrhO-A6NPg5zRsgs3QDRA2Ja1eATwUCsQ@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <321260F8-95D8-4C21-90B5-FDB0F6FF98F9@ebureau.com> <CAOtMX2hb%2BmoGWZFuUjrhO-A6NPg5zRsgs3QDRA2Ja1eATwUCsQ@mail.gmail.com>

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The biggest offender that I see is =
/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/411.pkg-backup

During the high CPU event, my process list contains hundreds of these:

	83811  -  RJ         0:03.42 xz -c
	83816  -  S          0:00.02 /usr/local/sbin/pkg shell .dump
	83818  -  SJ         0:00.02 /usr/local/sbin/pkg shell .dump
	83820  -  SJ         0:00.03 /usr/local/sbin/pkg shell .dump
	83824  -  RJ         0:03.41 xz -c
	83831  -  RJ         0:03.58 xz -c

I could probably get away with disabling that in my case.

However, instead of jitter, I think I'd prefer if the periodic jobs ran =
at a lower priority than my user processes. Either through nice, or =
idprio. I want them to get done as fast as possible, but I don't want =
them to affect my application.

	- .Dustin


> On Feb 16, 2017, at 4:20 PM, Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> wrote:
>=20
> Is the problem caused by newsyslog or by the periodic scripts?
> Newsyslog normally runs from cron directly, not through periodic.  In
> any case, here are a few suggestions:
> 1) Turn on cron jitter, as you suggested.  Even if 60s isn't enough,
> it can't hurt.
> 2) Try gz compression instead of xz compression to see if it's faster
> 3) Manually edit the jails' /etc/crontab files to hardcode some
> variability into their newsyslog and/or periodic run times
> 4) If the problem is actually being caused by periodic instead of
> newsyslog, tell me which script it is and how much jitter you want.  I
> am coincidentally changing how periodic manages jitter right now.
>=20
> -Alan
>=20
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 2:47 PM, Dustin Wenz <dustinwenz@ebureau.com> =
wrote:
>> I have a number of servers with roughly 60 jails running on each of =
them. On these hosts, I've had to disable the periodic security scans =
due to overly high disk load when they run (which is redundant in jails =
anyway). However, I still have an issue at 3:01am where the CPU is =
consumed by dozens of 'xz -c' processes. This is apparently daily log =
rolling, which I can't exactly disable.
>>=20
>> The effect is that our processing applications experience a major =
slowdown for about 15 seconds every morning, which is just enough that =
it's starting to get people's attention.
>>=20
>> What is the best way to mitigate this? I'm aware of the cron jitter =
feature, but I'm not sure of the 60-second jitter maximum would be =
enough (especially if I wanted to start utilizing more jails).
>>=20
>>        - .Dustin
>> _______________________________________________
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