Xorg issue I can't stand...

[Paulo J. Matos]

On 4/11/07, Roland Scheidegger <sroland at tungstengraphics.com> wrote:
> Paulo J. Matos wrote:
> > On 4/11/07, Roland Scheidegger <sroland at tungstengraphics.com> wrote:
> >> Paulo J. Matos wrote:
> >> > Hello all,
> >> >
> >> > I'm having, what I guess, being a Xorg problem. My version is
> >> > xorg-server 1.1.1. I have an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500. Laptop is a
> >> > Pentium4 2.2Ghz. The symptoms I have range over all my apps but one is
> >> > consistently there: X.
> >> > For example, whenever I'm browsing, from time to time, X goes up to
> >> > share 66% of CPU against 33% of firefox. When I'm seeing a movie, be
> >> > it with Xine or mplayer, everything is ok for the first couple of
> >> > minutes and suddently X starts eating my CPU again which hinders me
> >> > the possibility of continuing to watch the movie since the player
> >> > video stops (although audio keeps going). This happens no matter if I
> >> > use KDE, Gnome, or Enlightenment. I can't seem to know where to start.
> >> > I've enabled/disabled dozens of options in my xorg.conf but things do
> >> > not change. I've even tried (when X started eating my CPU) to strace
> >> > it by (as root) attaching strace to X process but as soon as I did
> >> > that my system blocked and I had to turn it off and on again.
> >> >
> >> > I'm just curious if I can do anything to debug, test, or anything. I'm
> >> > getting depressed as my system gets unusable and it seems I can't to
> >> > anything. Worst is, I'm not 100% sure it is Xorg. It might as well be
> >> > something else but I've already gone through kernels 2.6.18, 2.6.19
> >> > and 2.6.20 and the issue remains... :-/
> >> >
> >> > Any suggestions, advice is extremely welcome.
> >>
> >> You could try oprofile to see where all the cpu time is spent. That
> >> said, since it works initially, something strange must happen. Are you
> >> sure your cpu isn't going into thermal throttling? It could possibly
> >> cause what you're seeing. P4 are not suitable for notebooks, if the
> >> manufacturer skimped on cooling you're likely to get thermal throttling.
> >>
> >
> > Thermal throttling, heh? Never heard of it but I'll look into it. My
> > laptop has always been extremelly hot so that might be it. Not really
> > X-related but is there any solution to it?
>
> Put the notebook in the freezer? I don't think there's a solution to
> this, unless you can improve cpu cooling (which you usually can't with
> notebooks).
> Note that that the kernel log should indicate when the cpu goes into
> throttling mode, if the kernel option for it is enabled.
>

Do you happen to know which message should I look for in the logs
regarding throttling? The only message regarding temperature which
shows up a lot in the logs is:
smartd[6571]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194
Temperature_Celsius changed from 90 to 100

It starts by saying 40 to 50, then 50 to 60... etc... :-) 100 is the
max I've seen!

> Roland
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-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK