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#1 2018-03-03 22:58:50

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

I've noticed few days ago that I've got kworker process using (by xfce4-taskmanager) 25% of CPU, 100% of one of the cores.
And also my laptop's cooler is working a lot more. I think that there's some issue here and it should be like that.
What do do to diagnose this?

4.15.6-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT

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  Yv6Xrxxl.png

powertop:
  3r1nTmal.png

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#2 2018-03-04 07:32:18

seth
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Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

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#3 2018-03-06 14:29:01

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

I disabled gpe16, here's it's walue:

/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe16:    4281   disabled

The rest has value "0" so I assumed gpe16 was the fault one.

Should it make effect immediately? Because after 15 minutes nothing has changed, kworker still using 100% of one cpu core.

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#4 2018-03-06 14:51:08

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Did you check whether there were "hundreds of thousands of lines" for that interrupt? (For otherwise this is moot anyway)

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#5 2018-03-06 15:06:22

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Every gpeXX is only in one line. I don't know if I've understood wiki correctly: after grep should I receive output of thousand lines from one gpeXX, and then I know that this one is fault one?

All I've got is

/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci:    4284
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/error:       0
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe00:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe01:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe02:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe03:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe04:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe05:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06:       3   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe07:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe08:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe09:       0   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe10:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe11:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe12:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe13:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe14:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe15:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe16:    4281   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0A:       0   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0B:       0   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe18:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0C:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe19:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0D:       0   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0E:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe20:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0F:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe21:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe22:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe23:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe24:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe25:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe26:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1A:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe27:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1B:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe28:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1C:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe29:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1D:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1E:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe30:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1F:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe31:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe32:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe33:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe34:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe35:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe36:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2A:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe37:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2B:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe38:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2C:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe39:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2D:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2E:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe2F:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3A:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3B:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3C:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3D:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3E:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe3F:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci_not:      11
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_pmtimer:       0   invalid
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_rt_clk:       0   disabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe_all:    4284
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_gbl_lock:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_pwr_btn:       0   enabled
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_slp_btn:       0   invalid

The only thing I've noticed here is the different between gpe16 and rest of gpe's. There are no thousands of lines of code.

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#6 2018-03-06 15:33:30

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

"4281" is technically "thousands" ;-)
It seems much but since your kworker load is (?) still up, it's probably not the cause.
The only thing left was to disable it on boot to not cause an interrup build-up itfp.

Is it btw. a MacBook?

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#7 2018-03-06 15:57:45

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Yeah - 4281 is at least few thousands, and, compared to the rest which are mostly "0" it definitely looks suspicious.
I'll disable it on boot, but if kworker misbehaves again should I re-enable it?

It's an HP Probook.

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#8 2018-03-06 16:08:06

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Yes, disabling random interrupts for no good reason would be a bad idea (and will likely break some functionality)

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#9 2018-03-06 16:29:58

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Thanks a lot for you help.
What else can I do?

I've recently added 'threadirqs' kernel parameter. However, I've removed this parameter because I thought that maybe it was the reason.
I've also reverted to LTS kernel, no improvement.

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#10 2018-03-06 16:37:30

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

- Check dmesg for errors
- Only boot into/isolate the multi-user.target

Then see whether any of this has impact:
- Remove all external hardware (incl. monitors and ethernet)
- rfkill (ideally hard, ie. using a button?) the wifi
- Try with "acpi=off" kernel parameter
- Disable all power management daemons (tlp, laptop-mode-tools, powertop autoconfig)
- Finally reset the BIOS (use this as last step only unless you don't care about customized settings)

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#11 2018-03-07 13:20:49

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Kworker's still out of control, I re-enabled gpe16.

I've just updated BIOS, there was newer version released on 25.01.2018. I hope it'll solve something, I started noticing this issue about 2 weeks ago.

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#12 2018-03-09 18:01:31

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Kworker very high CPU usage, is this normal?

Bios didn't change anything.

However, I plugged off laptop from docking station yesterday and no kworker issue for now. All external hardware is plugged to the laptop.

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