On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Bruno Prémont > <bonbons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > Just in case, /proc/$(pidof rcu_kthread)/status shows ~20k voluntary > > context switches and exactly one non-voluntary one. > > > > In addition when rcu_kthread has stopped doing its work > > `swapoff $(swapdevice)` seems to block forever (at least normal shutdown > > blocks on disabling swap device). > > If I get to do it when I get back home I will manually try to swapoff > > and take process traces with sysrq-t. > > That "exactly one non-voluntary one" sounds like the smoking gun. > > Normally SCHED_FIFO runs until it voluntarily gives up the CPU. That's > kind of the point of SCHED_FIFO. Involuntary context switches happen > when some higher-priority SCHED_FIFO process becomes runnable (irq > handlers? You _do_ have CONFIG_IRQ_FORCED_THREADING=y in your config > too), and maybe there is a bug in the runqueue handling for that case. The forced irq threading is only effective when you add the command line parameter "threadirqs". I don't see any irq threads in the ps outputs, so that's not the problem. Though the whole ps output is weird. There is only one thread/process which accumulated CPU time collectd 1605 0.6 0.7 49924 3748 ? SNLsl 22:14 0:14 All others show 0:00 CPU time - not only kthread_rcu. Bruno, are you running on real hardware or in a virtual machine? Can you please enable CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG and provide the output of /proc/sched_stat when the problem surfaces and a minute after the first snapshot? Also please apply the patch below and check, whether the printk shows up in your dmesg. Thanks, tglx --- kernel/sched_rt.c | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) Index: linux-2.6-tip/kernel/sched_rt.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6-tip.orig/kernel/sched_rt.c +++ linux-2.6-tip/kernel/sched_rt.c @@ -609,6 +609,7 @@ static int sched_rt_runtime_exceeded(str if (rt_rq->rt_time > runtime) { rt_rq->rt_throttled = 1; + printk_once(KERN_WARNING "sched: RT throttling activated\n"); if (rt_rq_throttled(rt_rq)) { sched_rt_rq_dequeue(rt_rq); return 1;