Arch Linux

markbrazil

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 21

[Solved] random pauses in most applications

hi,

Getting random pauses normally 2-3 seconds in length in most applications.  At first I thought it was releated to java, but noticed the pauses in Opera and kwrite.  They are frequent enough at least once every 10minutes and sometimes a lot more.

I am running on a hp dv7 4120tx laptop, with ati hd 5650, and using ati catalyst 11.6 from the catalyst repo.

When I thought it was java, i did find a post about java pauses, and they mentioned using  "export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true".  It made no difference.  Other posts spoke about broadcom drivers, but I am using

$ lspci | grep Net
02:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe

Any ideas ? 

Thanks,
Mark.
ps: got one 3second pause typing this message.

Last edited by markbrazil (2011-07-17 03:03:20)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,774

Re: [Solved] random pauses in most applications

Anything in the logs about I/O errors on your drive?
You might look at htop and iotop to see if you can get any visibility into what might be behaving badly.

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Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
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How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,774

Re: [Solved] random pauses in most applications

Oh, and what is your memory situation.  Are you using swap space ??  (What is the output of free ??)

---

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

markbrazil

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 21

Re: [Solved] random pauses in most applications

Only thing in the logs is this

Jun 21 12:10:05 localhost kernel: [19145.118592] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:12:05 localhost kernel: [19264.926365] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:14:05 localhost kernel: [19384.732869] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:16:05 localhost kernel: [19504.537472] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:18:05 localhost kernel: [19624.344686] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:20:05 localhost kernel: [19744.153022] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:22:05 localhost kernel: [19863.962989] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060
Jun 21 12:24:05 localhost kernel: [19983.771438] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 1060

which i understand is spam from the ralink wireless.

if I run iotop two process keep coming up (running with iotop -a )

Top 2 processes 

4.1%  [jbd2/sda4-8]
2.4%  [jbd2/sda3-8]

sda4 is my /home partition
sda3 is my root partition

Memory I have lots of,  8gbytes

                 total            used            free       shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8131028    6004780       2126248          0     316640    2501348
-/+ buffers/cache:      3186792      4944236
Swap:      8393956        264           8393692

Unusual for me to use swap, but says 264 used.

Anything in the logs about I/O errors on your drive?
You might look at htop and iotop to see if you can get any visibility into what might be behaving badly.

markbrazil

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 21

Re: [Solved] random pauses in most applications

Found the answer.

My laptop, hp dv7, 4120tx has 2 drives. The second drive I was using for swap space and backup.

The second drive had a hardware issue. I didn't know until the machine went back to HP. The report said "Secondary HDD failed with the diags with #305 error and needs replacement"

Unsure what that error code means, but the swap file was sitting on a bad drive. I got my machine back Friday, have rebuilt it with Arch and is running perfectly.  No random pauses.