On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Andrew Hastie <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 01/05/13 15:34, Merlin Moncure wrote: > > On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 8:01 AM, Andrew Hastie <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 30/04/13 20:46, Merlin Moncure wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 8:28 AM, Andrew Hastie <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote: > > I'm currently working on a project porting an application from RedHat > Linux on Intel onto IBM zLinux. Our application requires PostgreSQL at > version 9.n, so the PostgreSQL binaries have been built using the > standard > build tools from source. Everything appears run correctly. However as > part > of performance testing, our IBM and Linux SysProgs have been "poking > around" > using strace and have reported the following (which they think is an > error > condition) when hooking up to the postmaster processes:- > > read(3, 0x3ffff875ee0, 16) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily > unavailable) > poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 2, 200) = 0 > (Timeout) > read(3, 0x3ffff875ee0, 16) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily > unavailable) > poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 2, 10000) = 0 > (Timeout) > ... repeated many times > > That does not look like the postmaster process. It looks like probably > the > background writer process. > > It is normal, and doesn't explain high CPU utilization. > > yeah: we're probably a couple of steps in front of deep system > profiling. Helpful things to provide to help diagnose would be: > > *) 'explain analyze' of the queries that are eating cpu > *) more details about the hardware -- how many cpu, etc. > *) better definition of 'perceived high CPU utilisation' > *) some correlating performance tests, expecially cpu bound pgbench > tests (pgbench -S) > > merlin > > > I'm not sure how much experience the community has on tuning PostgreSQL > running on RedHat which in turn is hosted on an IBM mainframe under VM > (using zLinux). So I'm happy to start posting further details and benchmark > results and see where we go. Should I be moving this thread over into the > pg-performance list, or is pg-general the right place? > > certainly performance. and yes, zLinux is less well traveled. Did > you compile postgres from source? Did you confirm that there is a > native spinlocks implementation and it is being used? > > merlin > > Did you compile postgres from source? - Yes (I need PG v9.n as v8.n shipped > with RedHat Ent6 does not have several v9 specific features we need). > > Did you confirm that there is a native spinlocks implementation and it is > being used? - I believe so as no errors or warnings logged during the build. > Is there a simple way to check whether spin-locks are running native? > > I've started looking at several articles covering pgbench and running some > initial tests, so I plan to start a new thread on pg-performance in the next > day or so. > > Thanks for the advice so far - Appreciated :-) I can't remember off the top of my head if configure forces you to specifically unset spinlocks to get through a build on a non-hardware spinlock platform. Point being: the interesting stuff happens during configure, not build. Check the contents of src/include/pg_config.h and look for this line: #define HAVE_SPINLOCKS 1 to see if you have hardware spinlocks. merlin -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general