# kslowd00x/kworker processes make my mouse jerky

## Fran

Title says it all. I've been having this problem in my laptop (intel grapichs card) since 2.6.35. This is an example of a top output when I get a jerky mouse:

```
10158 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S   10  0.0   0:19.03 kslowd000                    

 9997 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    9  0.0   0:25.13 kslowd003                    

10159 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    7  0.0   0:19.75 kslowd001                    

 9996 root      15  -5     0    0    0 D    7  0.0   0:25.18 kslowd002                    

 1477 root      20   0  156m  30m  14m D    2  0.8   0:24.24 Xorg                         

10013 franjva   20   0  242m  17m  11m S    1  0.5   0:00.66 gnome-terminal               

10022 franjva   20   0  569m  85m  36m S    1  2.2   0:09.57 chrome                       

10141 franjva   20   0  876m  55m  20m S    1  1.4   0:13.53 chrome                       

10106 franjva   20   0  832m  23m  10m S    1  0.6   0:00.49 chrome                      

```

I only found this thread talking about my problem, but it seems to be considered "solved" since july, so maybe my bug is different. 

Anyone else with this problem?Last edited by Fran on Sun Nov 14, 2010 3:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## imbiea

I was slow to upgrade my kernel in the last few weeks.

Yes, I also have this problem with Intel Graphics card, and linux-2.6.35-gentoo-r4  The system is un-usable.  Poor mouse, network, sound etc...  when I ran top, I kept seeing spikes in my CPU, where kslowd000 was taking about 20% of my CPU for about 1 second, and then going off the radar.

I've gone back down to 2.6.34-r1 for the time being.

Lots of other threads outside of Gentoo talking about this issue, but I'm not seeing (yet... might have just missed it)  a solution.

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## Ant P.

"D" means it's waiting on the disk. Try `sysctl vm.dirty_ratio=10 vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs=1000`

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## gentoo_ram

kslowd are kernel threads.  I highly doubt they are waiting on disk access.  More likely, there is some kernel driver issue for your video driver.  "D" means it is waiting for some kind of device operation to completely.  Most likely having to do with the video card.  I wouldn't muck with your VM settings in this case.

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## imbiea

I'll try booting back into that kernel to look around more...

But let me ask.  Does anyone know if this is something that has changed with 2.6.35?

Or is it something else I've done..

i.e. I "AM" trying new network drivers as well.

One thing that I DID notice, is that in switching to this kernel.. My GoogleEarth client FINALLY renders correctly.  Where as before (since I've switched to 5.x on the Google Earth client) my client doesn't render right at all, it's all fragmented.. (if that's the right way to describe it)... Where as with 2.6.35 everything looks good, but I've got crap for performance.  My network appears to work fine as well, but... again.. kslowd000 keeps kicking in, and killing my performance...

Once I switch back... What else should I look for ?

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## Fran

Still same issue with 2.6.36 and 2.6.37_rc1. In 2.6.36 and 37_rc1 the problem is with kworker/x, instead of kslowd00x, but the symptoms are the same. 2.6.34.x is the last version that works for me. I've found that even linus has had problems with this:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/8/15/111

but no solutions in that or in these theads:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16265

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20232

:/

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