kswapd0 at 100% cpu

[daemacles]

Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

Package ... unknown, going to guess the linux kernel.

The process kswapd0 takes of 100% of one of my processors. I can't kill it and have no idea why it starts churning away and never stops. Seems to happen only after suspending the computer.

See http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1315869 for another report of similar problem.

[caro (gurin-a)]

same things..
Linux turbo 2.6.31-15-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 10 14:54:29 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

Same here after upgrade to 2.6.31-15.

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

Now it's still happening when I boot 2.6.31-14. So it's probably caused by another package that was also get apt-upgraded.

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

I can see some suspects in /var/log/apt/term.log:
sysvinit-utils, initscripts, apparmor*

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

I don't really need swap on the machine. Usually swap usage is 0k.
I hope sudo swapoff -a will work around this.

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

It's still happening, with swap off :(
It seems something keeps on constantly spawning bash processes.

[Kasper Souren (guaka)]

Suspect: x2vnc. Right after I start x2vnc 100s of processes are started

[Eric Jiang (erjiang)]

Still happening with 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP x86_64

[Keldar (cryptbeast)]

Same here with 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP x86_64. Started happening after the most recent kernel upgrade.

[AK-87 (ak-87)]

With swap off kswapd0 takes 0 CPU time. Everything seems to be ok.

 Linux version 2.6.31-20-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8) ) #58-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 05:23:09 UTC 2010 (Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.58-generic)

top - 03:40:57 up 23:19, 2 users, load average: 2.35, 2.72, 2.60
Tasks: 184 total, 1 running, 183 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 19.6%us, 71.4%sy, 0.1%ni, 7.3%id, 0.6%wa, 0.7%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 896868k total, 780996k used, 115872k free, 40972k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 87144k cached

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi daemacles,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 484045

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

    [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[John McCabe-Dansted (gmatht)]

I can confirm this bug still occurs with upstream 2.6.35-rc1.

[John McCabe-Dansted (gmatht)]

Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: xp 2209 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0xefff4000 irq 23'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC662 rev1'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0662,10438290,00100101'
   Controls : 34
   Simple ctrls : 18
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'HDMI'/'HDA ATI HDMI at 0xef9fc000 irq 43'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100100'
   Controls : 4
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card1.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [off]
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=6bc66096-e553-4db4-b5ea-f2d1e4057f82
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
IwConfig:
 lo no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 002: ID 051d:0002 American Power Conversion Uninterruptible Power Supply
 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 045e:0040 Microsoft Corp. Wheel Mouse Optical
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0930:6545 Toshiba Corp. Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 Stick (4GB) / PNY Attache 4GB Stick
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
NonfreeKernelModules: vboxdrv
Package: linux 2.6.31.22.35
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-rc1-custom root=UUID=32de83f0-340c-4021-aac1-483bb2103f8f ro crashkernel=384M-2G:64M,2G-:128M quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
RfKill:

Uname: Linux 2.6.35-rc1-custom x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
WifiSyslog:

dmi.bios.date: 10/16/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
dmi.bios.version: ASUS P5N-MX ACPI BIOS Revision 0802
dmi.board.name: P5N-MX
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
dmi.board.version: 1.XX
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 123456789000
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologies,LTD:bvrASUSP5N-MXACPIBIOSRevision0802:bd10/16/2008:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rnP5N-MX:rvr1.XX:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer

[Hulin (hulin-thibaud-gmail)]

This bug has been reported at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=712019
Is this problem only affect 64 bits OS ?
Try this :
$ uname -a
Linux hulin-Latitude-E5520 3.0.0-16-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 14 12:48:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Hulin (hulin-thibaud-gmail)]

Not specific to Ubuntu, maybe to OS with a 64-bits mode.
See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=712019

[penalvch (penalvch)]

daemacles, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[intuited (intuited)]

A comment on the fedora bug (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=712019) mentions that this occurs when a large file (>2G) is in cache. I just started experiencing this bug while working with large files, so this may be something to look into.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

intuited, could you please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please see the Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue

and Ubuntu Community article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it. Thank you for your understanding.

[ValdikSS (valdikss)]

Still here in 3.7.1 on ArchLinux. Got it on video http://youtu.be/_-kT4dLVKLk
To temporary trigger this bug, run dd bs=1M count=2000 if=/dev/zero of=file.spin and watch for kswapd0 IO abuse.