2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

Hello Andrea,

I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:

1. top refreshing every second reniced to -10
2. alsaplayer -n -q -r *.wav
3. make -j4 bzImage modules

The problem is that with 2.4.10-pre11 alsaplayer is skiping very much.
Almost every ten seconds and then the break seems to be relatevily long
(like >1s). With 2.4.10-pre10 I noticed alsaplayer skiping once or twice
during the whole build (which takes about 6min) for a very short time
(like a cd player skipping over a scratch). Here is the diff output of
time -v of the make -j4 command:

planetzork:/usr/src/linux# diff -u time.out-2.4.10-pre1*
--- time.out-2.4.10-pre10-1000823801    Tue Sep 18 16:42:30 2001
+++ time.out-2.4.10-pre11-1000824952    Tue Sep 18 17:01:39 2001
@@ -1,16 +1,16 @@
-       Command being timed: "sh -c make dep clean>logfile-2.4.10-pre10 2>&1 && make -j4 bzImage modules>>logfile-2.4.10-pre10 2>&1"
-       User time (seconds): 241.28
-       System time (seconds): 17.82
+       Command being timed: "sh -c make dep clean>logfile-2.4.10-pre11 2>&1 && make -j4 bzImage modules>>logfile-2.4.10-pre11 2>&1"
+       User time (seconds): 242.11
+       System time (seconds): 17.10
        Percent of CPU this job got: 74%
-       Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 5:49.57
+       Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 5:47.60
        Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
        Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
        Average stack size (kbytes): 0
        Average total size (kbytes): 0
        Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 0
        Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
-       Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 901054
-       Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 934971
+       Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 906843
+       Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 936570
        Voluntary context switches: 0
        Involuntary context switches: 0
        Swaps: 0


Best regards,

   Jochen

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:14:16PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> Hello Andrea,
> 
> I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
> Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:
> 
> 1. top refreshing every second reniced to -10
> 2. alsaplayer -n -q -r *.wav
> 3. make -j4 bzImage modules
> 
> The problem is that with 2.4.10-pre11 alsaplayer is skiping very much.
> Almost every ten seconds and then the break seems to be relatevily long
> (like >1s). With 2.4.10-pre10 I noticed alsaplayer skiping once or twice

the skips shouldn't really be realated to vm changes, if something to
the schedrt fix. but the real issue is that you should avoid to run top
at -10 (or you meant +10?). Running top at -10 isn't a good idea, it is
allowing it to get more cpu than the other tasks for no good reason.

Andrea

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:25:00PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:14:16PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > Hello Andrea,
> > 
> > I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
> > Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:
> > 
> > 1. top refreshing every second reniced to -10
> > 2. alsaplayer -n -q -r *.wav
> > 3. make -j4 bzImage modules
> > 
> > The problem is that with 2.4.10-pre11 alsaplayer is skiping very much.
> > Almost every ten seconds and then the break seems to be relatevily long
> > (like >1s). With 2.4.10-pre10 I noticed alsaplayer skiping once or twice
> 
> the skips shouldn't really be realated to vm changes, if something to
> the schedrt fix. but the real issue is that you should avoid to run top
> at -10 (or you meant +10?). Running top at -10 isn't a good idea, it is
> allowing it to get more cpu than the other tasks for no good reason.

Ok, I just wanted to see the current load all the time :-) Btw. I don't
think that just one top running should cause alsaplayer (which runs
with real-time properties:

       -r, --realtime
              Enable realtime scheduling.  To use this as a  nor­
              mal user, alsaplayer must be SUID root.

As I wrote in a seperate mail alsaplayer skips during other activities
also, like starting mutt, mozilla, whatever ... And these are not
started reniced.

Since I am not using md there are not that much changes left between
-pre10 and -pre11. Or do you think that it is caused by the console
locking changes?


Regards,

   Jogi


-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:35:15PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> Since I am not using md there are not that much changes left between
> -pre10 and -pre11. Or do you think that it is caused by the console
> locking changes?

certainly not from the console locking changes. Can you just go back to
pre10 and verify you don't get those skips to just to be 100% sure the
userspace config is the same?

The only scheduler change in pre11 is this one:

	ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.10pre10aa1/00_sched-rt-fix-1

which should be infact a bugfix for rt threads, also discussed on l-k
recently, so it's not clear how this odd regression happened.

You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.

Andrea

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:44:34PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:35:15PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > Since I am not using md there are not that much changes left between
> > -pre10 and -pre11. Or do you think that it is caused by the console
> > locking changes?
> 
> certainly not from the console locking changes. Can you just go back to
> pre10 and verify you don't get those skips to just to be 100% sure the
> userspace config is the same?
> 
> The only scheduler change in pre11 is this one:
> 
> 	ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.10pre10aa1/00_sched-rt-fix-1
> 
> which should be infact a bugfix for rt threads, also discussed on l-k
> recently, so it's not clear how this odd regression happened.
> 
> You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.

Ok Andrea,

I will test and let you know about the findings but I am afraid I can not
test this today. But I will let you know. Btw. xmms is skipping like mad
too.

Regards,

   Jogi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:44:34PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:35:15PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > Since I am not using md there are not that much changes left between
> > -pre10 and -pre11. Or do you think that it is caused by the console
> > locking changes?
> 
> certainly not from the console locking changes. Can you just go back to
> pre10 and verify you don't get those skips to just to be 100% sure the
> userspace config is the same?

Ok, -pre10 is ok. There xmms did hang once for about a second, and at that
time I was building a kernel (make -j4), reniced top, starting mozilla,
StarOffice, Netscape, mutt (reading in mailbox with >200 emails in qmail
format).

With -pre11 much less is required.

> The only scheduler change in pre11 is this one:
> 
> 	ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.10pre10aa1/00_sched-rt-fix-1
> 
> which should be infact a bugfix for rt threads, also discussed on l-k
> recently, so it's not clear how this odd regression happened.
> 
> You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.

I will test this tomorrow and let you know about the results.

   JOgi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On 18 Sep 2001 17:51:04 +0200 jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:

> > You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.
> 
> Ok Andrea,
> 
> I will test and let you know about the findings but I am afraid I can not
> test this today. But I will let you know. Btw. xmms is skipping like mad
> too.

Hello,

just my experience in this topic:
I worked on -pre11 for one complete day after massive nfs server usage, no
problems so far.
current meminfo looks like:

        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  923574272 865853440 57720832        0 66609152 629137408
Swap: 271392768   434176 270958592
MemTotal:       901928 kB
MemFree:         56368 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:         65048 kB
Cached:         614240 kB
SwapCached:        152 kB
Active:         671956 kB
Inactive:         7484 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       901928 kB
LowFree:         56368 kB
SwapTotal:      265032 kB
SwapFree:       264608 kB

I currently compile kernel with -j 5 while playing mp3s via xmms without the
slightest problem (xosview load is now 8). I tried xmms run as root and user,
makes no difference. I tried starting applications (like mozilla or
applixware), no problem. No mouse hangs or anything else negative. I am _not_
using alsa, but emu10k1 from kernel.
I couldn't even make it crash or skip in xmms while singing Torn together with
Natalie - and listening to that _is_ real stress :-))

You only have to find some strategy to come around these formerly noticed alloc
failures, perhaps by an idea to free up pages instantly if an alloc would fail
otherwise (now). I like the overall performance very much, Andrea.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 09:28:56PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2001 17:51:04 +0200 jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> 
> > > You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.
> > 
> > Ok Andrea,
> > 
> > I will test and let you know about the findings but I am afraid I can not
> > test this today. But I will let you know. Btw. xmms is skipping like mad
> > too.
> 
> Hello,
> 
> just my experience in this topic:
> I worked on -pre11 for one complete day after massive nfs server usage, no
> problems so far.
> current meminfo looks like:
> 
>         total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
> Mem:  923574272 865853440 57720832        0 66609152 629137408
> Swap: 271392768   434176 270958592
> MemTotal:       901928 kB
> MemFree:         56368 kB
> MemShared:           0 kB
> Buffers:         65048 kB
> Cached:         614240 kB
> SwapCached:        152 kB
> Active:         671956 kB
> Inactive:         7484 kB
> HighTotal:           0 kB
> HighFree:            0 kB
> LowTotal:       901928 kB
> LowFree:         56368 kB
> SwapTotal:      265032 kB
> SwapFree:       264608 kB
> 
> I currently compile kernel with -j 5 while playing mp3s via xmms without the
> slightest problem (xosview load is now 8). I tried xmms run as root and user,
> makes no difference. I tried starting applications (like mozilla or
> applixware), no problem. No mouse hangs or anything else negative. I am _not_
> using alsa, but emu10k1 from kernel.
> I couldn't even make it crash or skip in xmms while singing Torn together with
> Natalie - and listening to that _is_ real stress :-))
> 
> You only have to find some strategy to come around these formerly noticed alloc
> failures, perhaps by an idea to free up pages instantly if an alloc would fail
> otherwise (now). I like the overall performance very much, Andrea.

I'm very happy to hear this ;).

I now have an update ready for Linus to merge that should fix the few
leftovers I had in the very first release of the vm rewrite but of
course I will be interested to hear about any regression/progression
about those changes, I'll post them in a few minutes in CC to l-k.

They're still untested on the >1G boxes but the oom problems weren't
specific to highmem so it should fix the highmem troubles too.

Andrea

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrew Morton]

Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> 
> I now have an update ready for Linus to merge that should fix the few
> leftovers I had in the very first release of the vm rewrite but of
> course I will be interested to hear about any regression/progression
> about those changes, I'll post them in a few minutes in CC to l-k.
> 

Please include Andi's likely()/unlikely() change - it's nice.

I can't measure any obviously new causes of latency in your
VM.  It's nice that you've paid attention to this in various
places.

The main culprits now are the file IO and dirty buffer writeout paths:
up to fifty milliseconds in each.

I suggest you stick scheduling points in generic_file_read(),
generic_file_write() and write_locked_buffers() and then dispose
of the copy-user-latency patch from -aa kernels.

With the above fixed, the main source of latency is
/proc/meminfo->si_swapinfo(). It's about five milliseconds per gig
of swap, which isn't too bad.  But it's directly invokable by
userspace (ie: /usr/bin/top) and really should be made less dumb.

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 01:02:27PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > 
> > I now have an update ready for Linus to merge that should fix the few
> > leftovers I had in the very first release of the vm rewrite but of
> > course I will be interested to hear about any regression/progression
> > about those changes, I'll post them in a few minutes in CC to l-k.
> > 
> 
> Please include Andi's likely()/unlikely() change - it's nice.

I guess I'll postpone the likely/unlikely after resynching with Linus
since I'm basically ready to run rsync and I prefer to go sleep early
today and to think about new things tomorrow ;).

I also have a few arguments about the likely/unlikely to solve before
agreeing on it, in particular in all my usages the value will be either
0 or 1 so I don't see why should I tell gcc to do !!, probably it will
be optimized away but I also don't see why should the left term matter
for an "if", the "if" only cares about zero or non zero, so I should be
able to define the fast path with an 1 even if my result is 2, otherwise
it sounds like gcc is doing something strange.

> I can't measure any obviously new causes of latency in your
> VM.  It's nice that you've paid attention to this in various
> places.

thanks.

> The main culprits now are the file IO and dirty buffer writeout paths:
> up to fifty milliseconds in each.
> 
> I suggest you stick scheduling points in generic_file_read(),
> generic_file_write() and write_locked_buffers() and then dispose
> of the copy-user-latency patch from -aa kernels.

Yes, I pretty much agree on such change, I remeber you just pointed out
once. It's postponed to tomorrow too ;).

At the moment I just care to post the vm fixes against pre11 plain in
order to possibly get some feedback on it while I sleep :)

> With the above fixed, the main source of latency is
> /proc/meminfo->si_swapinfo(). It's about five milliseconds per gig
> of swap, which isn't too bad.  But it's directly invokable by
> userspace (ie: /usr/bin/top) and really should be made less dumb.

ok.

Andrea

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Hugh Dickins]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> With the above fixed, the main source of latency is
> /proc/meminfo->si_swapinfo(). It's about five milliseconds per gig
> of swap, which isn't too bad.  But it's directly invokable by
> userspace (ie: /usr/bin/top) and really should be made less dumb.

Don't worry about this one, fix is included in patch I posted last
Saturday, and will be rebasing, breaking up and submitting to Linus
in a couple(?) of days.  Basically, Zach Brown's patch to use
nr_swap_pages and total_swap_pages, but in rare case of concurrent
swapoff, does need to scan that swap_map (with appropriate locking)
to give sensible numbers without strange negatives at that time.

Hugh

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:44:34PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:35:15PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > Since I am not using md there are not that much changes left between
> > -pre10 and -pre11. Or do you think that it is caused by the console
> > locking changes?
> 
> certainly not from the console locking changes. Can you just go back to
> pre10 and verify you don't get those skips to just to be 100% sure the
> userspace config is the same?
> 
> The only scheduler change in pre11 is this one:
> 
> 	ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.10pre10aa1/00_sched-rt-fix-1
> 
> which should be infact a bugfix for rt threads, also discussed on l-k
> recently, so it's not clear how this odd regression happened.
> 
> You can try to back it out and see if helps just in case.

Hello Andrea,

I backed out this patch and it did not help. But I checked with top
and alsaplayer is in status D and hanging in waitchannel wait_on_p
(probably wait_on_paige). Furthermore there are lots of other processes
waiting in wait_on_p and wait_on_b. Since the problem might be I/O
related here is the output of hdparm /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 I/O support  =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 nowerr       =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  8 (on)
 geometry     = 3165/255/63, sectors = 50859648, start = 0

dmesg:

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci00:07.1
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xa400-0xa407, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xa408-0xa40f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALLlct08 26, ATA DISK drive
hdc: QUANTUM FIREBALL CR13.0A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 50859648 sectors (26040 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=3165/255/63, (U)DMA
hdc: 25429824 sectors (13020 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=25228/16/63, (U)DMA
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
 hdc: [PTBL] [1582/255/63] hdc1 hdc2 hdc3 hdc4 < hdc5 hdc6 >

mount:

/dev/hda3 on / type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda2 on /boot type ext2 (ro)
/dev/hda5 on /var type reiserfs (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /usr type reiserfs (rw)
/dev/hda7 on /home type reiserfs (rw)

Hope this helps. If you need further testing just let me know.


Regards,

  Jogi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:44:34PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> certainly not from the console locking changes. Can you just go back to
> pre10 and verify you don't get those skips to just to be 100% sure the
> userspace config is the same?

Hello Andrea,

forget about the scheduler changes. I did the following change and the
problem is almost solved. Before I had both kernel and wav files on

/dev/hda6              4200828   1745204   2455624  42% /usr
/dev/hda6 on /usr type reiserfs (rw)

I copied kernel source and wav files to

/dev/hda8              8989695   2907606   5615804  34% /mnt
/dev/hda8 on /mnt type ext2 (rw)

and it skipped only three (very short) times. So it seems to be a problem
of reiserfs in combination with your memory management changes. Dang!
Can someone of the reiserfs people comment on this?

Regards,

   Jogi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:14:16PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> Hello Andrea,
> 
> I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
> Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:

Sorry to follow up on my own. But the problem seems to be worse than I
first thought. Kernel build is the first thing I test when I try a new
kernel :-)

So now I logged into X and even during starting of Mozilla or normal
web browsing alsaplayer is skiping *lots*. The system is not into swap
and has about 150MB cached. Just to let you know ...

I guess I will go back to -pre10 now. If you want to let me test some
things just let me know.

Regards,

   Jogi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:25:29PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:14:16PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > Hello Andrea,
> > 
> > I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
> > Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:
> 
> Sorry to follow up on my own. But the problem seems to be worse than I
> first thought. Kernel build is the first thing I test when I try a new
> kernel :-)
> 
> So now I logged into X and even during starting of Mozilla or normal
> web browsing alsaplayer is skiping *lots*. The system is not into swap
> and has about 150MB cached. Just to let you know ...
> 
> I guess I will go back to -pre10 now. If you want to let me test some
> things just let me know.

just make sure not to renice top at -10. Are you sure you reniced top at
-10 also with pre10? Those issues shouldn't really vm related. I also
profiled the new vm well and it never showed up in the toplist so I
suspect you changed something in userspace. and of course I run xmms all
the time too and it didn't skept one sample yet.


Andrea

Re: 2.4.10-pre11: alsaplayer skiping during kernel build (-pre10 did not)

[jogi]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:31:42PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:25:29PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 05:14:16PM +0200, jogi@planetzork.ping.de wrote:
> > > Hello Andrea,
> > > 
> > > I gave your new vm a try and I have to report a problem. System is an
> > > Athlon 1200 with 256MB memory. Workload:
> > 
> > Sorry to follow up on my own. But the problem seems to be worse than I
> > first thought. Kernel build is the first thing I test when I try a new
> > kernel :-)
> > 
> > So now I logged into X and even during starting of Mozilla or normal
> > web browsing alsaplayer is skiping *lots*. The system is not into swap
> > and has about 150MB cached. Just to let you know ...
> > 
> > I guess I will go back to -pre10 now. If you want to let me test some
> > things just let me know.
> 
> just make sure not to renice top at -10. Are you sure you reniced top at
> -10 also with pre10? Those issues shouldn't really vm related. I also
> profiled the new vm well and it never showed up in the toplist so I
> suspect you changed something in userspace. and of course I run xmms all
> the time too and it didn't skept one sample yet.

Ok, I just killed top. And it still is skiping lots although I do
not have any reniced jobs running. And yes, I had top running reniced
too on -pre10. I will boot -pre10 and check if it is skipping because
alsaplayer is currently skipping as hell (running make -j4 in the
background). Still no swap used. Strange. I will check xmms also and
let you know.

Regards,

   Jogi

-- 

Well, yeah ... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

    << Calvin & Hobbes >>