ksoftirqd/0 takes all the CPU power

[T99-fys]

Hello,

I have UBUNTU installed on an IBM T40p.
When I run firefox (not 100% sure but I think it is the starting factor) the
process called ksoftirqd/0 takes over all the power making my CPU work at 100%
all the time.
I kan not kill this process and I have'nt found any information about it in the
bug report search.
If you need more information I would be more than glad to answer you.

Regards
Charles

[T99-fys (t99-fys)]

ksoftirqd/0 also stard its little CPU consuming after I played Ennemy territory.
I read somewhere that it had something to do with "internet" if it may be a hint ;)

Here is my response to top after 5min :

 00:09:46 up 5:22, 3 users, load average: 1.12, 1.54, 1.73
Tasks: 87 total, 2 running, 84 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.7% us, 3.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 94.3% si
Mem: 515728k total, 289504k used, 226224k free, 7940k buffers
Swap: 522072k total, 119940k used, 402132k free, 134812k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    2 root 39 19 0 0 0 R 96.9 0.0 7:44.85 ksoftirqd/0
12623 challe 15 0 49536 9348 2324 S 1.7 1.8 3:22.37 skype
 6814 root 15 0 76000 37m 5072 S 0.7 7.5 10:25.98 Xorg
12638 challe 15 0 57304 17m 6476 S 0.7 3.6 0:47.98 python
    1 root 16 0 1552 500 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.57 init
    3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.15 events/0
    4 root 6 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
   16 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 kacpid

Regards
Charles

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

output of lspci and lsmod when this happens would be nice.

thanks

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

kernel version as well

[T99-fys (t99-fys)]

Now it's up again so here comes lsmod and lspci

~% lsmod
Module Size Used by
nls_iso8859_1 3936 1
vfat 13824 1
fat 41760 1 vfat
binfmt_misc 11496 1
speedstep_centrino 7892 1
proc_intf 3908 0
freq_table 4004 1 speedstep_centrino
cpufreq_userspace 4348 1
cpufreq_ondemand 6140 0
cpufreq_powersave 1632 0
pcmcia 22244 4
video 15972 0
sony_acpi 5928 0
pcc_acpi 11008 0
ibm_acpi 17524 0
button 6480 0
battery 9988 0
container 4320 0
ac 4676 0
ipv6 257888 9
wlan_wep 6752 1
usbhid 31936 0
spca5xx 322264 0
videodev 9792 1 spca5xx
af_packet 21992 4
ath_pci 60608 0
ath_rate_onoe 8904 1 ath_pci
wlan 118524 4 wlan_wep,ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
ath_hal 133232 2 ath_pci
e1000 85620 0
yenta_socket 21344 0
snd_intel8x0 32352 0
snd_ac97_codec 74144 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss 52132 0
snd_mixer_oss 19680 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 94696 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 25060 1 snd_pcm
snd 55012 6 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixe
r_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 10016 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 9732 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
i2c_i801 8364 0
i2c_core 22320 1 i2c_i801
piix 10340 1
shpchp 99172 0
pci_hotplug 33488 1 shpchp
intel_agp 22140 1
agpgart 33608 1 intel_agp
irtty_sir 8544 0
sir_dev 18828 1 irtty_sir
irda 191936 2 irtty_sir,sir_dev
crc_ccitt 1920 1 irda
floppy 58864 0
rtc 12472 0
pcspkr 3496 0
nls_cp437 5600 2
ntfs 110512 1
md 47440 0
dm_mod 59420 1
capacommoncap 7712 1 capability
nvram 9096 0
joydev 9664 0
tsdev 7520 0
evdev 9344 1
psmouse 21320 0
mousedev 11288 1
parport_pc 37252 1
lp 11144 0
parport 36744 2 parport_pc,lp
ide_generic 1312 0
ide_disk 20416 2
ide_cd 41700 0
cdrom 40220 1 ide_cd
fglrx 237088 9
ext3 137256 2
jbd 60536 1 ext3
mbcache 8356 1 ext3
unix 28276 789
thermal 13320 0
processor 22452 2 speedstep_centrino,thermal
fan 4388 0
fbcon 37504 0
font 8192 1 fbcon
bitblit 5472 1 fb...

[Rasmus Dietrich (rasmus-dietrich)]

I have the same problem with the same Laptop under breezy, IBM Thinkpad T40p:
ksoftirqd/0 takes up all the processing power, the processor goes up to 1,6 GHz.

I'm using Kernel 2.6.12-9-386.

It seems to be related to switching of Wifi, with the Atheros module still
loaded. It happens using the Fn+F5 Switch or doing
sudo echo -n 3 > /sys/class/net/ath0/device/power/state
in console.
It is enough to switch the Wifi card back on to let the precesor state go back down.

ras@Nero:~$ lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 0 3)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03 )
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US
B UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US
B UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US
B UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB 2.0 EHCI
Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Contro
ller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Contr
oller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4
-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem
 Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 Lf [Rad
eon Mobility 9000 M9] (rev 02)
0000:02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1520 PC card Cardbus Controlle
r (rev 01)
0000:02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1520 PC card Cardbus Controlle
r (rev 01)
0000:02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controlle
r (Mobile) (rev 03)
0000:02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5211 802.11ab N
IC (rev 01)
ras@Nero:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
binfmt_misc 10888 1
rfcomm 34972 0
l2cap 22404 5 rfcomm
ipv6 217408 8
speedstep_centrino 7380 1
cpufreq_userspace 4444 1
cpufreq_stats 5124 0
freq_table 4484 2 speedstep_centrino,cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave 1920 0
cpufreq_ondemand 5916 0
cpufreq_conservative 6820 0
pcmcia 24584 4
radeon 68352 1
drm 58004 2 radeon
video 16004 0
tc1100_wmi 6916 0
sony_acpi 5516 0
pcc_acpi 11392 0
ibm_acpi 17908 0
hotkey 9508 0
dev_acpi 11396 0
i2c_acpi_ec 5760 0
i2c_core 19728 1 i2c_acpi_ec
button 6672 0
battery 9604 0
container 4608 0
ac 4996 0
af_packet 20232 2
wlan_wep 5888 1
irtty_sir ...

[Rasmus Dietrich (rasmus-dietrich)]

Its one day I'm trying to reproduce this problem with the steps descibed
yesterday, but it doesn't happen again.
I was connected to a different wifi router yesterday. everithing else sould be
unchanged.
I also tryed to switch back and forth from wifi to wire, dhcp to static, but
everithing works smooth now. There must be something more I did yesterday, I
will see if I can find the exact steps.

[Rasmus Dietrich (rasmus-dietrich)]

I've not been able to reproduce this bug, it seems to be solved for me.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

This bug has been flagged because it is old and possibly inactive. It may or may
not be fixed in the latest release (Breezy Badger 5.10). It is being marked as
"NEEDSINFO". In two weeks time, if the bug is not updated back to "NEW" and
validated against Breezy, it will be closed.

This is needed in order to help manage the current bug list for the kernel. We
would like to fix all bugs, but need users to test and help with debugging.

If this change was in error for this bug, please respond and make the
appropriate change (or email <email address hidden> if you cannot make the
change).

Thanks for your help.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Closing, appears resolved.

[asdf (asdf123123-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I have this issue on a T43p with Kubuntu Dapper. I'm not sure why this problem is, but it stopped after I switched WLAN on again. When I turned it back off cpu utilisation was very high again.

I also just setup the laptop and noticed that it does not use linux-686, so i'm not sure if this has something to do with the problem.

Btw: Why does ubuntu install kernels for such old systems by default??

[barna (daniel-barna)]

I have the same problem on a Toshiba Satellite notebook, with Kubuntu 8.04

[Tuomo Vainikainen (tuomo-vainikainen)]

Hello,

I have IBM R40 with Ubuntu 8.04 2.6.24-16-generic and my daughter is very unhappy when this happens with Firefox which seems to launch process. Our WLAN changed from D-Link to Buffalo and reluctant to change back, I logically removed apache and mysql server (obviously she doesn't need them). Now this computer has worked fine for an hour... If someone is interested I can provide further information.