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Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:37:06 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
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To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
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Subject: Re: PID 11 using 400% CPU
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> From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org  Wed Jun 29 23:07:59 2011
> Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:37:11 +0530
> From: Manish Jain <invalid.pointer@gmail.com>
> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
> Subject: PID 11 using 400% CPU
>
>
>    Hello All,
>    I have a strange problem with my 8.1 box. After booting, the hard disk
>    goes into a full-speed never-ending spin. 'ps waux' always shows pid
>    11 as taking 400% CPU utilization :
>    /root # ps -up 11
>    USER   PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ   RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
>    root    11 400.0  0.0     0    32  ??  RL    7:22PM 166:35.46 [idle]
>    I have tried multiple tweaks to resolve this - all to no effect. The
>    only thing that seems out of place is that polkitd seems to be
>    missing. (I have no idea why this is the case). /etc/rc.conf states
>    polkitd_enable="YES".
>    This happens even in single-user mode, which I used to try to fix any
>    filesystem errors with 'fsck -fy' : there were none.
>    My system has only 2 partitions : ad8s2a (/) and ad8s2b (swap).
>    Any pointers to what might the problem be ? Thanks in advance.

The problem is that you have twin dual-core CPUs or a single 4-core CPU.
The solution is to substitute a single single-core CPU.

This will bring the _system_idle_process_ utilization down to 100% when the 
system is _not_ doing anything else.

OR, you can compile the following C program:


  #include <stdlib.h>
  int main( int argc, char** argv)
  {
     while (1);
     exit(0);
  }

and run, say, 8 copies of it in background.  this will reduce the cpu
utilization of PID 11 to roughly 0%.

The fact that the disk is running is absolutely normal.