On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 09:08:32PM +0000, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
> some other possible explanation.
> 
> some kernel code uses almost 100% CPU in such case.
> 
> the disk request sorting procedure may be this - it would sort HUGE
> request list which will take time leaving almost none of CPU time for user
> process.
> 
> no such effect will be seen if disk is not 100% loaded - such case req.
> queue will never go so long.

No I don't think that's it, because I tried remplacing disksort_blkno()
with disksort_tail() in the ide driver, and this didn't help at all.
Also both top and systat show low CPU usage.

I really think the issue is that sometime the process needs disk access, and
the request takes seconds to be handled.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--