[vbox-dev] Excessive load averages with nothing running.

[Ramshankar]

On 07/12/2015 05:53 PM, Alessandro Suardi wrote:
> Linux bumps up load average by 1 for each process in D state - so the point here
>   is not that something is being used (it isn't), but why is
> iprt-VBoxTscThr in D state?
>
> Devs might find helpful a
>
>   $ ps auxww|grep iprt-VBoxTscThr
>
>   since that would should the kernel WCHAN where the thread is stuck.

It's not really stuck, the TSC delta thread in the support driver is 
doing an uninterruptible sleep, see supdrvTscDeltaThread() function. 
https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/HostDrivers/Support/SUPDrvGip.cpp

Under kTscDeltaThreadState_Listening case label; you will see that we 
are doing a RTThreadUserWait() which does an uninterruptible sleep 
waiting to be woken up by an event from the main thread in the 
VirtualBox driver if necessary.

Does the attached patch make any difference for you?

Regards,
Ram.

> Cheers,
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 6:18 PM, Perry Halbert <phalbert at cox.net> wrote:
>> Builds are done from SVN but the issue is also present in released V-5
>> build. Linux is all I use so I can't tell you about Win or Mac.
>>
>> Issue with loads when no guests, VBoxsvc, or VBox manager are running, just
>> the kernel modules active.
>>
>> with running vboxdrv modules
>> uptime shows load average: 1.24, 1.18, 0.84
>>
>> show running services associated to VBox shows the following:
>> ps -awx | grep V
>> 13713 ?        S<     0:00 [iprt-VBoxWQueue]
>> 13717 ?        D      0:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]
>>
>> After stopping vboxdrv modules
>> load average: 0.11, 0.09, 0.16
>>
>> I have tried building without the new services plus a few more I thought
>> might have been causing this, DnD, Crypt, Webservice, HIDPI, and SDL with
>> the following in the LocalConfig.kmk but results were the same as with or
>> without.
>>
>> VBOX_WITH_DRAG_AND_DROP =
>> VBOX_WITH_PLUGIN_CRYPT =
>> VBOX_WITH_WEBSERVICES =
>> VBOX_WITH_WEBSERVICES_SSL =
>> VBOX_GUI_WITH_HIDPI =
>> VBOX_WITH_VBOXSDL =
>>
>> The loads with vboxdrv modules enabled ( default ) are constant and never go
>> below at least 1.24 which seems a little excessive to me when nothing is
>> actually being used.  Any thoughts on the matter or advice on what to look
>> for?
>>
>> Perry
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> vbox-dev mailing list
>> vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
>> https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
>>
>
>

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