From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Aug 22 14:21:50 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA8C3106568C for ; Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:21:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2CFD8FC1F for ; Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:21:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5E9DF46B09; Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:21:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:21:50 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Daniel O'Connor In-Reply-To: <200908222211.52878.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Message-ID: References: <200908201204.24914.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <200908202212.22831.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <200908222211.52878.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: Kostik Belousov , FreeBSD Stable Subject: Re: Blocked process X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:21:50 -0000 On Sat, 22 Aug 2009, Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, CmdLnKid wrote: >> came back or the machine was rebooted. I continued for a while using >> /var/mail over NFS while setting or unset mail variables for the shell. You >> may also want to check into whether something is trying to acquire a lock >> on a file over that NFS mount which could accrue some extra time making it >> seem like a process is hung. > > We don't have any NFS mounts so I don't think that's it :( Hi Daniel-- A number of issues were corrected over the course of the 6.x life span involving scheduing, including some relating to "lost wakeups". Many bug fixes relating to threading were also introduced (not sure if that's relevant to your workload). While it's never a particularly fun recommendation, I think I'd suggest sliding forward to the most recent 6.x kernel (but otherwise identical configuration), perhaps sticking with your current userspace, and seeing if that resolves the issue. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge