feisty generic kernel performing worse than i386
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
linux-source-2.6.20 (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: linux-image-
linux-image-
However, looking at what is happening in more depth makes me believe there is nothing wrong with frequency scaling at all. What seems to happen is the following:
Something occupies the CPU. It is not a task listed in "top" but it seems to be a user task since "top" shows user CPU usage that does not correspond with the tasks listed below. Due to that CPU load, the frequency does never go down.
A result of all this is, that it seems like the system has only about 4 short time-frames per second in which it can work on the other tasks. This can be seen when opening an application in Gnome. The rectangular frame which pops up and scaling up to indicate an application start is not performing a smooth animation like it would when using the i386 kernel. The animation is intermittent. Scaling up, stopping, scaling up again, stopping again, ... About 4 times a second.
The same behavior can be observed already when booting up the system, when the services are started. Everything is much slower than with the i386 kernel.
Even extracting the kernel image takes much much longer! The fact that even that early in the process the symptoms are present does not strengthen the theory it could be a user task like one should suspected looking at "top". However, what do I know about the kernel internals.
I have no idea, what is happening there, but this behavior exists ever since the generic kernels exist. I don't remember if the i686 kernels showed this behavior as well.
It should be mentioned that everything works fine with the i386 kernel. Except of course power down does not work and STR does not put the system in the power saving state after preparing everything needed. I am pretty sure it would even wake up, but the hardware just does not suspend.
Laptop: Sony Vaio VGN-S560P
Thank you for your bug report.
elias:
Can you post the output of
cat /etc/fstab
and
sudo /sbin/blkid
?