[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE 9.2 Updates -- LOOKOUT!

[Stephen Davidson]

Kevin Brannen wrote:

> Stephen Davidson wrote:
>
>> Kevin Brannen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Yeh, you don't really have to have ACPI.  You don't need powersaved 
>>> either, feel free to kill that process.  I just found out that 
>>> gkrellm is for handling themes under gnome; kill that too.  It would 
>>> be really interesting to know if one of those was the hog.
>>>
>>> Too bad you've already reinstalled the system.  But I understand 
>>> that real work is far more important than looking at interesting 
>>> system configurations. :-)  Afterall, one of them pays the bills...
>>>
>>> Kevin
>>>
>> Hi Guys.
>>
>> More info from misbehaving system.  I wound up having to run some 
>> updates, but did not update everything.  Did update powersaved, some 
>> KDE stuff that related to power management, and gkrellm.
>>
>> And that and with a little bit of luck allowed me to chase down where 
>> the problem is.  With that update, the 5 sec spike was back.  But it 
>> was only to %50 total, and no system lock up.  Increase of time for 
>> task processing by about %30.  Not great, but something I can live 
>> with, and definately better than the near stalls.  I had not applied 
>> the Kernel updates yet, so I think there may be an additional problem 
>> in the kernel to drive the spike to 100%.
>> Stopping powersaved does not stop a KDE powermonitoring service.  
>> Unload the module "battery", and the spike goes away.
>>
>> Problem: This machine is a laptop.  And I frequently need to run it 
>> off of batteries (to the point where I have a spare battery).  I 
>> _need_ some kind of battery monitoring service.  Anyways, I am 
>> planning on being at the Linux Install Project tommorrow morning, if 
>> anyone is interested in having a look.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Steve
>>
>
> Very interesting...  So, are you using ACPI?  If so, ditch that and 
> try using APM (you may need to recompile your kernel for that, or at 
> least you may need an APM kernel module).  I've had problems with ACPI 
> for resource monitoring, while APM worked fine; I've heard of problems 
> in the reverse direction.  This behavior is *extremely* hardware 
> dependent.  Each of the hardware vendors follows the "standards" 
> differently. :-(  [or so it seems]
>
> Kevin


Hi Kevin.

To get this fixed is worth AT LEAST a free lunch or two from me, if you 
want.

On SuSE, APM is dependant on ACPI, so I can't ditch ACPI.  Help?

Actually, there is one thing I want to try from Chris before trying to 
fix this configuration.

Regards,
Steve

-- 
Java/J2EE Developer/Integrator
Stephen Davidson and Associates, Inc.
Vice President, DFW JavaMUG (http://javamug.org)
Past Chair, Dallas/FortWorth J2EE Sig
214-724-7741