From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 30 04:56:06 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C0480106564A for ; Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:56:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from email2.allantgroup.com (email2.emsphone.com [199.67.51.116]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8661C8FC0C for ; Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:56:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by email2.allantgroup.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id p5U4u5JC009574 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:56:05 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (smmsp@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id p5U4u1m4087422 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:56:01 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.5/8.14.5/Submit) id p5U4u1gw087421; Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:56:01 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:56:01 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Manish Jain Message-ID: <20110630045559.GD44024@dan.emsphone.com> References: <4E0BF66F.9080800@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4E0BF66F.9080800@gmail.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97 at email2.allantgroup.com X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.6 (email2.allantgroup.com [199.67.51.78]); Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:56:05 -0500 (CDT) X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.68 on 199.67.51.78 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PID 11 using 400% CPU 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, 30 Jun 2011 04:56:06 -0000 In the last episode (Jun 30), Manish Jain said: > > 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. To see what disk I/O is being done, try running "ktrace -dip 0 ; sleep 10 ; ktrace -C", to capture all syscalls done on the entire system (pid 0 plus children) for 10 seconds, then run "kdump -m64 | less" to view the results. Look for read or write calls. > '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 As for this, what's to resolve? The idle process is a placeholder with one thread per CPU that accounts for time the CPU isn't doing any work. If you want to reduce it's "CPU use", run other CPU-intensive processes :) BTW, Windows has the same thing if you look at task manager; it's called "System Idle Process" there. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com