[ltp] system unresponsive during disk activity

[BioHazard]

Marcus Better wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> my laptop becomes unresponsive whenever some process does a lot of disk I/O,
> like when I install or upgrade Debian packages. The other applications
> appear to be starved for periods of ten seconds or longer, don't redraw
> their windows and don't respond to input.
> 
> This is an R60 with 1 GB RAM running kernel 2.6.24-rc6 (x86_64) and KDE. The
> problem has been around for a long time with earlier kernels. The file
> systems are mostly XFS.
> 
> I don't have any reason to assume the problem is Thinkpad-specific but am
> not sure where to start looking. My other laptop, an LG i386 with a similar
> setup but ext3 instead of XFS does not have this problem - but then it has
> 3 GB RAM.

I've been having the same problem ever since I first got my T60 (mid
2006). If anything touches the disk, whether it be loading a program,
saving a file or playing music, 1 CPU is pinned with IOWait. If the app
I'm using happens to be multi-threaded, or I create disk activity while
running Audacious, my whole system completely stops until it's done
doing whatever it's doing with the disk.

My system:
Linux ferret 2.6.23-gentoo-r8 #1 SMP Wed Feb 13 09:41:28 PST 2008 i686
Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2400 @ 1.83GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
Thinkpad T60 2613-EAU (ATI-X1400, SXGA+, IPW3945). This one has a 100GB
5400RPM drive and 1.5GB of RAM.

I've got the HDD set in ACHI mode in the BIOS and I'm using
CONFIG_ATA_ACHI for the HDD and CONFIG_ATA_PIIX for the DVD-R. I have
the IO scheduler set on CONFIG_DEFAULT_CFQ but I remember trying the
other settings to no avail.

It's probably just a kernel config problem. I'm pretty harsh about
cutting down my kernel to the bare minimum and I'll bet I turned
something important off as I have seen a lot of people with similar
hardware who have no problems.

-- Ryan