Hi Kris I was wondering if you would be so kind as to take a look
at the results below to see if they highlight anything that might be the
cause of this performance issue.

I've raised this on the rrdtool list and quite a few people seem able to
run 10* the amount of updates on none FreeBSD systems without these
disruptive system wide stalls.

Given this and the statement on one of your papers saying you would be
interested in any loads that don't run well FreeBSD I hoped you might be
able to have a look at this and provide us with areas to focus on.

   Regards
   Steve
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven Hartland"
----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Watson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It looks like the attachment got lost on the way through the mailing list.

I think the first starting point is: what sort of stall is this? Is it, for example, all network communication stalling, all disk I/O stalling, or the entire kernel and all processes stalling? The usual diagnostics are:

- Does the machine stop responding to pings while stalled, and/or possibly
  "catch up" all at once when it recovers?

- If you run the following loop on the machine without any network or console
  I/O, do you see gaps in time stamps:

 while (1) {
 sleep 1
 date >> date.log
 }

- If you write a short C program that looks a lot like the above loop, but
  logs time stamps into an in-memory buffer, and have it look for gaps in the
  sequence of >3 seconds, does it run across the stall?

Thanks for the ideas Robert the output from the shell script
this shows significant gaps:-
Sun Mar  9 00:20:33 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:20:34 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:21:09 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:21:10 GMT 2008
...
Sun Mar  9 00:25:23 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:25:24 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:25:25 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:25:27 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:25:53 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:25:59 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:26:00 GMT 2008

Running a ping along side shows no missed responses.

Enabling lock profiling for the period changes the behaviour somewhat,
producing shorter but multiple stalls.

Sun Mar  9 00:30:31 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:32 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:34 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:35 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:36 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:37 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:38 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:41 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:42 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:30:44 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:45 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:30:47 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:30:49 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:50 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:30:52 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:30:54 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:55 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:56 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:30:57 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:31:03 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:31:05 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:06 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:31:08 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:09 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:10 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:11 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:31:14 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:15 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:16 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:31:20 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:21 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:31:22 GMT 2008

Using the following c code we also see stalls:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

int main( char **argv, int argc )
{
   time_t last = time( NULL );
   while ( 1 )
   {
       time_t now = time( NULL );
       time_t diff = now - last;
       if ( diff >= 2 )
       {
           fprintf( stderr, "stalled for %d seconds\n", diff );
       }
       fprintf( stderr, ctime( &now ) );
       last = now;
       sleep( 1 );
   }

   exit( 0 );
}

[date.log]
Sun Mar  9 00:55:40 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:43 GMT 2008 <== Stall
Sun Mar  9 00:56:11 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:12 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:13 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:14 GMT 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:15 GMT 2008
[/date.log]

[timec output]
Sun Mar  9 00:55:40 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:41 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:42 2008
stalled for 2 seconds
Sun Mar  9 00:55:44 2008
stalled for 5 seconds
Sun Mar  9 00:55:49 2008
stalled for 2 seconds
Sun Mar  9 00:55:51 2008
stalled for 2 seconds
Sun Mar  9 00:55:53 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:54 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:55 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:56 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:57 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:58 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:55:59 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:00 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:01 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:02 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:03 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:04 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:05 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:06 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:07 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:08 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:09 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:10 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:11 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:12 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:13 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:14 2008
Sun Mar  9 00:56:15 2008
[/timec output]


As the list ate the attachment, the output from the lock profile
can be found here:-
ftp://ftp1.multiplay.co.uk/pub/other/freebsd-7.0-rrdtool-stall.zip

   Regards
   Steve


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