# ACPI system load

## fraris

Hi all,

i have a little problem with my Toshiba Satellite 5200-701.

With kernel gentoo-2.4.20-rc1 and ACPI compiled anything works fine

(i refer to LCD display brightness, Alsa sound support for intel-8x0) but

my system load is always at 100% (about 98% of system time and 2% of user).

This problem disappears if i boot without ACPI... but no control on LCD display is still available and my sound card ... fails to start

anyone experienced the same problem?

is any kernel patch available for this issue ?

thx in advace

/f/

----------

## CodeHacker84

I must say that I have experienced the same problem and I don't like the way this looks.  I first noticed this happening with the 2.4.20-acpi-r8 kernel, and the same thing happens with r9.  I just compiled with the 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 sources and discovered the same thing.  If this is a bug, it showed up a long time ago, and it hasn't been fixed yet.  I'd give it a shot, but I have zero kernel hacking experience, and I don't even know where to start.

P.S. I'm running one of those horribly-designed Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504's with the "legacy-free" architecture and the indequately-cooled desktop processors, so this is a big issue for me as leaving the damn thing up for too long could kill it.

----------

## CodeHacker84

Ok, so we all know that Toshiba laptops have a strange and often impractical design  :Evil or Very Mad:  could it be that this system load problem is unique to the Toshiba architecture?  Or maybe I'm doing something wrong.  :Confused:   In either case, I've not seen this particular problem mentioned before (and yes, my system actually behaves as if it's under 100% load, even though I don't have any processes that are shown to be taking up that much processor time in top) on any of the forums.  I suppose that if I get my wlan card working soon I'll devote some time to tracking it down, but I'm not a kernel hacker  :Crying or Very sad:  and I would feel a helluva lot more comfortable if we could get someone who knows what they're doing to work on this...

----------

## avendesora

What process/thread is eating up all your CPU?

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## CodeHacker84

There isn't one, at least according to top.  There is just a mysterious drain on the CPU that appears to be coming from nowhere.  I'd debug it if I knew where to start looking, but I haven't the faintest clue.  I can only guess that it has something to do with a patch that is included in both 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 and all >2.4.20-acpi-r6.

----------

## avendesora

no processes with a high 'TIME' value show up with "ps aux" ?

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## CodeHacker84

How high is high?  The highest time in the list is 1:48 for keventd.  The machine's been up almost five hours.

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## CodeHacker84

K, looks like I'm on my own  :Sad:   I'll post some updates periodically.  Anyone with ideas, feel free to help.  Guess I'm gonna start by trying to cross-reference patches in the kernel ebuilds  :Confused:  maybe I can narrow it down to about fifty likely offenders  :Crying or Very sad: 

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## BradN

Just an idea... can you disable all but the bare minimum ACPI stuff to make your sound card and such work, until the problem can be fixed completely?

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## CodeHacker84

Ok, well here's the story on MY problem at least...I can't speak for fraris   :Embarassed:  .  I've compiled the damn kernel with everything compiled as modules except for basic ACPI support (General Setup->ACPI support->[*] ACPI support).  None of these modules are listed as being loaded in my lsmod output, but I'm still getting the ghost CPU drain.  Can't come up with an explanation...any one else have ideas?

[edit] The modules I'm referring to are the ACPI modules, everything else is compiled the same as I've always compiled it.  Just thought some clarification was in order.

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## CodeHacker84

Alright, I've isolated the problem down to one menuconfig option: CONFIG_ACPI.  I don't know what this option entails, but one or more of the resulting compiles has a bug  :Confused:  .  I'm looking for the source file now...anyone who wants to can feel free to help.

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## CodeHacker84

Alright, I'm gonna do what I should've done about for months ago and submit a bug report to bugzilla.  After that, I'm gonna continue to do what I can from my end, I know everyone's busy, maybe I'll find it.

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## avendesora

Did you check out http://acpi.sourceforge.net/ before heading that way?

Chances are other people have the same issues.

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## CodeHacker84

No, unfortunately I didn't think of checking there before I annoyed our already overworked bughunters...but after checking there I found one other reference to this problem mentioning something about a high number of interrupts.  This person also was using a Toshiba "Legacy-Free"  :Twisted Evil:  laptop.

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## CodeHacker84

Alright, so the debugger guys seem to think it's just bad GKrellm output due to idle calls (at least if I understood the response correctly).  I find this a little hard to believe when /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature reports my CPU running at 71*C and the fan is running full-bore.  I STILL think it's a kernel bug.  Is there anyone out there with a Toshiba laptop  running with a newer kernel version that DOESN'T have the problem described in this thread?

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## snkmoorthy

here is my 1 cent..

is there an APIC in your laptop, is it enabled or disabled in your kernel. look what dmesg says about ACPI. Turn on ACPI debug messages, check those messages.

I do remember another APIC problem, that is APIC turned on in kernel, but no real APIC, the system hangs. However, I have see this issue resolved, with "simulating APIC" in ACPI code. may be you don't want that, may be you do.

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## CodeHacker84

Ok, well, I've tried both with no success.  I have enabled APIC in the kernel, and I have disabled it, but it seems to not have an effect.  I've checked my dmesg output and I see things like (but not exactly), "IRQ's 7 and 10 disabled and routed through IRQ 6," but now because of my wireless card and the kernel's "eth1: Error -110 writing Tx descriptor to BAP" messages, I can't see all of my dmesg output anymore.

Also, I've seen something in the ACPI forums about another guy with a Toshiba laptop and he claims that he's getting excessive interrupt requests, which would lead me to believe that there was a change to the ACPI kernel code that now generates these interrupt requests.  As for which source code module it is, I don't know, but I have compiled a list of source code modules that have changed since the last version that works, and (by cross-referencing the Makefile(s) ) that are in the right directories to have caused the problem.  I'm currently checking through this list for code that makes me suspicious.  The problem shouldn't be in /usr/src/linux/drivers/acpi/bus.c.

That's all I know.

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## azote

If I use ACPI on my toshiba laptop 5205-s703 the Nvidia card will not work properly!...

example:

normal boot with acpi : ~500 Frames Per Second

boot with acpi=off:  ~3000 Frames Per Second

but the bad thing about the acpi=off .. is that I dont  get sound neither wireless going...

paying without sound ... sucks...

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## CodeHacker84

Azote, there's another thing that could affect your video performance like that: a system plagued by extraneous interrupt requests.  What does the output of "top" look like?

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## Noth

 *fraris wrote:*   

> Hi all,
> 
> i have a little problem with my Toshiba Satellite 5200-701.
> 
> /f/

 

This is not a little problem!

I have the same moddel.  :Wink:  Been working on this for 3 weeks. Heres what you do so far. 

1. Remove fan support in acpi! this does NOT fix the problem as you 			already know but it will allow you to (in spikes) steel back up to 80% of the CPU. Then just deal with it. (Note that the fan WILL still work.)

OR

2. emerge vanilla-kernel. get the 2.4.21-pre4 patch from kernel.org, and the latest ACPI patch from their site. This DOES fix the load problem. BUT I can't seem to even compile the nvidia-kernel driver when running it. Seems it has some ACPI problems?

I sent in a bugzilla report about this a while ago, it is being worked on and the new patch should be in the next gentoo-sources release (at the least gentoo-sources2.4.21). It has been reported that the latest gs-sources has the patch....well I don't know about that, I do know it still does not work. Your system does NOT have an apic  :Sad: , don't bother adding it.

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## azote

 *CodeHacker84 wrote:*   

> Azote, there's another thing that could affect your video performance like that: a system plagued by extraneous interrupt requests.  What does the output of "top" look like?

 

```

top - 11:51:45 up 5 min,  2 users,  load average: 1.29, 0.94, 0.44

Tasks:  42 total,   3 running,  39 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Cpu(s):   5.0% user,  95.0% system,   0.0% nice,   0.0% idle

Mem:    514264k total,   111476k used,   402788k free,     4864k buffers

Swap:  1261092k total,        0k used,  1261092k free,    54976k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  Command           

11716 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  4.7  5.5   0:13.42 mozilla-bin       

30508 root      16  -1  272m  16m 4016 S  1.0  3.3   0:08.09 X                 

    3 root      23   0     0    0    0 S  0.7  0.0   0:03.67 keventd           

 2247 root      17   0  5412 5412 2496 R  0.3  1.1   0:01.24 enlightenment     

28582 root      23   0     0    0    0 R  0.3  0.0   0:00.01 kacpidpc          

    1 root      17   0   472  472  420 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.91 init              

    2 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration_CPU0    

    5 root      36  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd_CPU0    

    8 root      23   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd            

   11 root      23   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 bdflush           

   14 root      17   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kupdated          

 3136 root      17   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd             

 3267 root      18   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 i2oevtd           

 3919 root      17   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.09 kjournald         

 6144 root      18   0   884  884  580 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.05 devfsd            

29579 root      17   0   600  600  504 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.21 syslogd           

29936 root      17   0  1676 1676 1180 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.13 cupsd             

31446 root      17   0   528  528  376 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.02 klogd             

31547 root      17   0   404  404  356 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 crond             

  706 root      18   0   668  668  508 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 cardmgr           

 1506 root      18   0  1824 1824 1252 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.02 smbd              

 1862 root      17   0  1572 1572 1060 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.04 nmbd              

 3803 root      17   0  5012 5012 2160 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.01 miniserv.pl       

 3880 root      18   0  1000 1000  800 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.05 login             

 3882 root      17   0   392  392  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 agetty            

 3889 root      17   0   392  392  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 agetty            

 3892 root      17   0   392  392  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 agetty            

 3897 root      17   0   392  392  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 agetty            

 3900 root      17   0   392  392  348 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 agetty            

14584 root      18   0  1308 1308 1052 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.02 bash              

30032 root      18   0   928  928  820 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 startx            

30493 root      17   0   604  604  532 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.04 xinit             

 5858 root      27  10  1132 1132  988 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.32 E-Cpu.epplet      

 5870 root      27  10  1064 1064  928 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.04 E-MemWatch.eppl   

14285 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  0.0  5.5   0:00.01 mozilla-bin       

14286 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  0.0  5.5   0:00.19 mozilla-bin       

14289 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  0.0  5.5   0:00.00 mozilla-bin       

16040 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  0.0  5.5   0:00.04 mozilla-bin       

26788 root      17   0 28368  27m  15m S  0.0  5.5   0:00.00 mozilla-bin       

10968 root      17   0  3276 3276 1960 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.33 xterm             

11765 root      18   0  1244 1244  980 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 bash              

13650 root      17   0   972  972  784 R  0.0  0.2   0:00.06 top               

```

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## fraris

 :Embarassed: 

i'm sorry... but I was out for vacation (!) ...

I read everything on the forum.. and i'll start working in 3 minutes.

Stay tuned... i'll post some results  :Wink: 

thx for all 

/f/

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## CodeHacker84

Yep, that's about what I figured, azote...I have the same problem.  I think that the possibility of excessive interrupt requests could do this, since the processor would be running the code for the interrupt about every 10 nanoseconds.  I have a list of all the source files that have changed since the last version of the patch that worked properly, but I don't think I'm qualified to go looking through them for the problem, especially since I have reason to believe that the problem is a patch-kernel interfacing problem.   I don't hack kernels...maybe it's time to learn.

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## azote

Good news!!!

I just compiled kernel 2.5.64 !!!

and every thing works great!!

even my GLX acceleration works Great ... I have fixed all of my problems!!!

You really need to trieyed...

I havent got a crash yet.. (is a beta kernel)

the 

Cpu(s):   5.0% user,  95.0% system,   0.0% nice,   0.0% idle 

is fix! now

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## Liathus

I am having the same issue on my toshiba 5105-s501 laptop.  The issue appears if I use the current gentoo-sources or the ck-sources.  Does anyone have any ideas about this?  The stable kernels should work IMHO.  I would rather not have to use a beta 2.5 series kernel.

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## Dessimat0r

Try the latest mm-sources kernel - see my tread in Portage and Programming

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## endgamer

forgive really dumb question, but did you (azote) just emerge the latest kernel or ... downloaded it and installed it? 

the other thing is, someone mentioned that the 2.4 vanilla kernels that are on the cd will prevent bad overheating of cpu?

----------

## azote

my kernel 2.5 is working great!!

every thing that I had to twike to make it work on the 2.4 in this one every thing  work !!!!!

my frames per second have gone to ~3000 !! with out to do anything..

my wireless, sound and wireless work all at the same time!  :Smile: 

just give it a try !! is as much statable as the 2.4 gentoo !

at least for me.

----------

## azote

 *endgamer wrote:*   

> forgive really dumb question, but did you (azote) just emerge the latest kernel or ... downloaded it and installed it? 
> 
> the other thing is, someone mentioned that the 2.4 vanilla kernels that are on the cd will prevent bad overheating of cpu?

 

yes I emerged!  :Smile: 

you will need to :

```
emerge development-sources

emerge module-init-tools
```

and just fix the link to your linux source to the new kernel and just do the usual

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## CodeHacker84

Yes, that is one way to fix it.  The other is to use the most recent ACPI patch on the Vanilla sources.  That worked for me.  I had trouble with the 2.5.65 development kernel, but I have all the features that I need working with the vanilla kernel wireless, sound, video, etc.  I'll have to check the code that changed, but I still think that it was something to do with the System Control Interrupts.

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## DogbertTheRuler

Azote, I have a satellite 5000 laptop and I'm trying to make it work with 2.5.65-mm4, but I'm having all sorts of problems.  At first I was not able to make to mouse working and now (after tweaking menuconfig) and can't even boot up.  So if it's possible, could you send me your .config file and I will compare it with mine to see where I goofed   :Embarassed: 

Thanks!

----------

## DogbertTheRuler

Ok, I finally tried something else.  I moved .config file to .config.saved and then I did make menuconfig.  It restored all the default values!  I then configured the USB support and my mice are working!!!!

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## azote

 *DogbertTheRuler wrote:*   

> Azote, I have a satellite 5000 laptop and I'm trying to make it work with 2.5.65-mm4, but I'm having all sorts of problems.  At first I was not able to make to mouse working and now (after tweaking menuconfig) and can't even boot up.  So if it's possible, could you send me your .config file and I will compare it with mine to see where I goofed  
> 
> Thanks!

 

I have a Satellite 5205 and I had a lot of trouble with  2.5.65-m4. It didnt detect my wireless build in card... so I down graded to the regular development-sources-2.5.65  

now every thing works nice..

----------

## fraris

Hi All,

my results...

using kernel-2.5.66 and xfree 4.3 everything is going fine!

No high load, acpi support (thermal, fan, etc etc ...) ALSA, nvidia...

now my "little" problem is solved... I can start using gentoo!

 :Smile: 

-f-

----------

## matjazk

I have noticed this issue and thought that I must have done something wrong, so installed slackware, and mandrake as well just to test all the options and the same problem occurs (on a Toshib 5105-S501). The thing I have noticed is that if I use the vanilla source and compile the acpi support already in the kernel the problem does not occur. Does anyone know how different is that support from the patch? Since I am a newbie I am a bit reluctant to try out the 2.5.66.

----------

## Reformist

I have the same issue on my HP xf328 laptop with ACPI enabled and a WLAN card; system is at 95% all the time, nothing shows up in top.

So, I'm glad to have found this thread, I'll be trying those newer kernel sources and I'll be testing it out.

Also, the only time my fan turns on is when a user process takes 100% CPU or something busy. System is at 100% all the time (as reported by top and other monitors) but the fan doesn't come on. CPU is pretty hot.

----------

## quiller

I've had the same problem (always 100% load) on my Toshiba Satellite 1410-604, but now its running fine, with acpi enabled on the "gs-sources" kernel. (2.4.21_pre7). The 100% load is gone, and the toshiba acpi stuff (lcd brightness ect.) works fine. The only problem I had with this kernel is that the OSS intel8x0 module wouldn't compile, but Alsa works just fine (just enable sound support in the kernel or Alsa won't work either).

Good luck,

Quiller

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## Reformist

I upgraded to the mm sources (a 2.5.x kernel) and the acpi 100% load problem is gone, as others have also reported.

----------

## EvilN

Just an update for people installing more current.

The problem is still there with gentoo-sources-r5 so go with the mm-sources.

I use a 5100-501 and basically have the same problem as everyone else.

mm-sources worked although I screwed up the alsa thingy in the kernel but that's only my fault (as usual).

----------

## Troggy

Hi there !

I Just came across this thread. I own a Toshiba Satellite 2410-404 and had that ACPI problem too with 2.4.20 - after all it seems to be an ACPI issue because it works well with the 2.5 ACPI backport. I use gs-sources because it has the ACPI-patch applied as well as most of the other gentoo-patches and I don't want to switch to 2.5 .

However I'm curious if it has been fixed in 2.4.21 vanilla...

Greetz

 Troggy

----------

## samokk

I think 2.4.21 fixes some ACPI stuff.

maybe it could help ?

sam

----------

## X-SoCiaL

I run a Toshiba Satellite 5100-503 and can confirm that the problem exists on this model to   :Crying or Very sad: 

Another shity thing I got problems with is FN+F5(screenswitch). toshutils doesnt help. Seems this is software controlled in Windows. The keys doesnt react in Linux. (Added support for Toshiba laptop in kernel.)

/Roger

----------

## pi-cubic

what's the deal with 2.4.21 with the acpi-patches? is there still the 100%-system-load-bug? i think the bug was up to version 2.4.21-pre4...

greetz,

pi-cubiq

----------

## EvilN

The "bug" is definitly still there in gentoo-sources-r5. I don't know what pathc set is used there for ACPI but its still there anyway.

----------

## Troggy

2.4.21 + ACPI-Patch fixes this issue, I think. As I wrote before, gs-sources work fine for me.

Greetz

 Troggy

----------

## talen_mystwing

Hey everyone. I'm a new forum member and new Gentoo user as of last week.   :Very Happy: 

I've got a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S503 with this exact same issue when I use the gentoo-sources kernel. I was wondering why the fan was always laboring so much since switching from Windows XP and why the overall system responsiveness was strangely hesitant. top doesn't show you the problem of course, which is what led to me look here.

The discussion here seems to present a lot of good avenues to explore as far as a fix.   :Smile: 

Last night, I emerged the pfeifer-sources and booted on them just to see, and for the first time, the fan slows down and finally turns off while the system is idle and /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature reports something less than 85C (66C actually, which is far better when it's actually placed on my lap  :Razz: ).

I gotta redo it so my NETGEAR MA401 and the nVidia GeForce2Go work properly, but it looks very promising. I'll be sure to let everyone know here. And perhaps I'll try the development-sources too, just to compare.   :Wink: 

----------

## X-SoCiaL

Just want to inform ya all that vanilla-kernel-2.4.21 made magic on my Toshiba 5100-503. ACPI works like it should now.

Thanx Linuz =)

/X

----------

## vhkristof

Hey,

don't know if my problem has anything to do with yours, but...

my fan won't start  :Sad: 

Don't have a Toshiba, it's a lifetec..

----------

## taylorad

For all those who have the nasty ACPI problem ( your system constantly running near 100% ),  there is a quick fix for this.  I have been running various versions of Linux on my Toshiba 5005 S507 for some time now, and I finally figured out how to fix this.  :Smile:    Your alternatives are to build one of the development kernels or pick out one of the more fancy versions, but I'm happy with the gentoo-sources myself.

Go into the kernel source directory; we'll start from there.  If you have an older kernel and need to apply ACPI patches, please do so now.  For 2.4.21-rc5, ignore what I just said. Now, you need to edit /usr/src/linux/drivers/acpi/events/evrgnini.c.  Down around line 293, you'll see the line:

```
acpi_os_derive_pci_id (node, region_obj->region.node, &pci_id);
```

Just comment it out like so: 

```
/*  acpi_os_derive_pci_id (node, region_obj->region.node, &pci_id); */
```

Recompile the kernel and you're set!  

Again, you can use an alternative kernel.  Some of them work, so of them don't.  The ones that do already have this 'patch' applied  :Smile:   ACPI4Linux has already been notified about this fix, though they said they are actually trying to rework this part of the processor feature.

----------

