Arch Linux

AaronD

Member

From: Tosev 3

Registered: 2009-01-27

Posts: 29

[Solved] Empty optical drive = high CPU usage

Hello,

I have been a Gentoo user for 4 years and have installed Arch on my new laptop.  The install went well and my system is nearly trouble-free.  The problem I'm having is that both of my CPU cores idle at 25-30% when the combo drive is empty.  When I put a CD in the drive, both cores idle at 2-3%.

It appears to be a udev problem.  The hal-disable-polling command didn't help (yes, I restarted hal), and top shows me this:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
19473 root      20   0  266m 111m  13m R    5  2.9   1:33.85 X
  654 root      18  -2  6156  840  428 R    4  0.0   1:36.15 udevd
  479 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    2  0.0   0:44.57 scsi_eh_1
 2443 aaron     20   0  298m  24m  13m S    1  0.6   0:03.11 konsole
 3758 aaron     20   0 70148 4044 2828 S    1  0.1   0:41.02 conky
29169 aaron     20   0  447m  34m  23m R    1  0.9   0:29.03 kwin
    1 root      20   0  3796  668  576 S    0  0.0   0:00.27 init

It seems that udevd process is the one looking at the combo drive.  What else do I need to look at to fix this problem?

Edit:  I forgot to mention that I'm not getting any relevant spam in my messages.log.

Last edited by AaronD (2009-10-08 01:36:40)

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--Aaron

jt512

Member

Registered: 2009-02-19

Posts: 262

Re: [Solved] Empty optical drive = high CPU usage

This is a known bug in the current version of udev.  See this thread for workarounds.

AaronD

Member

From: Tosev 3

Registered: 2009-01-27

Posts: 29

Re: [Solved] Empty optical drive = high CPU usage

Thanks for putting on the right track.  I downgraded udev which solved the problem.

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--Aaron