Re: another must-fix: major PS/2 mouse problem

From: Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@ucw.cz>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@digeo.com>
Cc: Yoann <linux-yoann@ifrance.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>,
	"Albert D.Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>
Subject: Re: another must-fix: major PS/2 mouse problem
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:47:37 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030604094737.C5345@ucw.cz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20030603232155.1488c02f.akpm@digeo.com>; from akpm@digeo.com on Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 11:21:55PM -0700

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 11:21:55PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:

> We believe that it may be due to the ethernet driver holding interrupts off
> for too long when the traffic is heavy.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that the ethernet driver
disables the interrupts for a too long time, it just means that the
computer is only servicing the network interrupts at that time, and
since the mouse interrupt does have a lower priority, it's serviced
not very often and with huge delays.

In such a case the network driver should either use interrupt mitigation
if the cards supports it (reading many packets per one interrupt) or
switch to a polled mode.

> Does that seem to match your observations?  Does the problem happen when
> the net traffic is high?
> 
> Which ethernet driver are you using?

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs, SuSE CR