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Date:      Sun, 17 Sep 2000 06:32:19 +1100 (EST)
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG, jhb@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: 100% system time? (SMPng on UP system)
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009170616550.362-100000@besplex.bde.org>
In-Reply-To: <200009161501.e8GF13n01686@Magelan.Leidinger.net>

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On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, Alexander Leidinger wrote:

> dnetc runns with idprio 31, system cvsupped around Sep 16, 11 CEST from
> a german mirror (it contains the idle fixes: src/sys/kern/kern_idle.c,v
> 1.4), complete build{world,kernel}.
> 
> ---snip---
> last pid:  1666;  load averages:  1.10,  1.11,  1.03    up 0+00:51:21  16:54:14

Perhaps it really is a system process :-[.  idprio on a pure cpu hog prevents
other user processes from running like a system process might do:

	idprio 31 sh -c "while :; do :; done"

System processes actually hang the entire system until they complete:

	dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=10m count=1

This takes 32 seconds on a Celeron 366 overclocked to 523, during
which time no other processes, including interrupt tasks, can run.
This is because the supergiant lock prevents context switching while
the i/o is being done.  There is nothing special about /dev/random
here except that it has a low transfer rate.

Bruce



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