Latest working kernel version: 2.6.27 Earliest failing kernel version: 2.6.30-r5 (perhaps earlier) Distribution: gentoo Stable Hardware Environment: Thinkpad R51e w/ Intel Pentium M 1.73 GHz Even when not-starting X11 powertop reports a very high amount of wakeups without visible reasons for it. The wakeup count for single sources max out around 50/s, while the wakeup count reaches values from 10.000 to 80.000. /proc/interupts reflects the wakeups displayed by powertop while /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/* shows 0-2 interrupts. As a result the CPU seldom reaches C3 and the power consumption is high. In 2.6.27 wakeup count of the tickless kernel stays around 100 when idle, 50 without X11. After learning about https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12788 I disabled NOHZ and got a system with around 200 wakeups. Steps: to reproduce: just boot any tickless kernel
Created attachment 36432 [details] powertop -d output of tickless kernel Showing 27000 wakeups when idle in a Gnome session.
Created attachment 36442 [details] dmesg output of nohz kernel The kernel is patched because of that bug: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13155. But the wakeups are independ of the version of the EC Driver code.
Created attachment 36452 [details] 2 contents of /proc/interrupts, 10 seconds delay in between
Created attachment 36462 [details] Output of cat /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/*
Created attachment 36472 [details] 75.000 wakeups before starting X11
It seems it's USB that keeps on waking up the system, and this should have been improved a lot by the runtime PM in latest kernel. Vitus, can you please try 2.6.36 kernel with CONFIG_PM_RUNTIME set and see if the problem still exist?
The kernel already had CONFIG_PM_RUNTIME enabled and when powertop prompted to press 'P' to enable runtime power management I did so. When booting to console and unloading USB drivers (usbcore remains inuse, *hcd is unloaded) nothing changed. After unloading ath5k powertop reports ca. 40 wakeups/s, but occasional this skyrocks to 6.000 or more. There is no pattern, 1 min, 2 min, no high wakeup count for 5 minutes.
Created attachment 36742 [details] /proc/config.gz of running kernel This is the configuration used in all tickless 2.6.36 kernels.
(In reply to comment #7) > When booting to console and unloading USB drivers (usbcore remains inuse, > *hcd > is unloaded) nothing changed. After unloading ath5k powertop reports ca. 40 > wakeups/s, but occasional this skyrocks to 6.000 or more. There is no > pattern, > 1 min, 2 min, no high wakeup count for 5 minutes. this sounds like an ath5k driver problem as the interrupt is growing fast as well.
(In reply to comment #9) > (In reply to comment #7) > > When booting to console and unloading USB drivers (usbcore remains inuse, > *hcd > > is unloaded) nothing changed. After unloading ath5k powertop reports ca. > 40 > > wakeups/s, but occasional this skyrocks to 6.000 or more. There is no > pattern, > > 1 min, 2 min, no high wakeup count for 5 minutes. > > this sounds like an ath5k driver problem as the interrupt is growing fast as > well. Perhaps. But it's only growing by 40-50 interrupts/s and not 50.000. And the wakeups still occur after at5k is unloaded, only very seldom. I will switch over to cable ethernet and see how this reacts after really using the machine.
I'm not convinced that this is ath5k either, but let's Cc them just in case...
I'm a bit confused, can you characterize the # of wakeups with/without ath5k? You seem to say unloading it drops the number of wakeups, but that it doesn't have a lot of interrupts? Or is the issue that #interrupts doesn't seem to correlate with wakeups as reported by powertop? /proc/interrupts output seems to show about 400 interrupts on that shared line for 10 seconds, so 40/s which is probably not too unusual if the card is actively receiving beacons with a few APs around.
As ath5k doesn't support powersave currently, 40/s is indeed the value always shown for ath. And output of powertop and /proc/interrupts is matching in this respect. I've unloaded ath5k and support and used the cable. The next powertop outputs show that the high wakeup count isn't related to a specific interrupt line, it even happens when there is no noticable interrupt activity. But in that case I was only able to catch a 846/s case.
Created attachment 37002 [details] 67364 wakeups while wgetting at 10K/s via cable ath5k unloaded, USB *hcd unloaded
Created attachment 37012 [details] 34700 wakeups while running mpg123 (47/s for audio)
Created attachment 37082 [details] 45000 wakeup/s while doing nothing (no ath5k, no USB) This is only a screenshot of powertop as it's not predictable when this happens without any noticable interrupt activity. I was watching powertop running in a screen session resumed from a ssh connection. Usual wakeups/s in this constellation are around 40/s.
Ok, not sure where we left this...is this issue still valid?
(In reply to comment #17) > Ok, not sure where we left this...is this issue still valid? It is. Why shouldn't it? I'm running kernel 2.6.36-00001-gf6257ae very successfully since 30th of october... with CONFIG_HZ_100=y. The one commit is a port of the Embedded Controller driver v2.0 from 2.6.27 with ec_int=0. EC interrupts kill the Thinkpad R51e.
Maybe I'm missing it, but it seems like you are just showing some numbers with no clear indication of either what you think the numbers should be or why you think ath5k is at fault?
John, perhaps this wasn't too clear but in the very first comment I stated that the wakeup count I expect from a tickless kernel is 50-100 per seconds. Depending on load. As for at5k, that was your idea, see comment #11
Ah, well thanks for sorting that out. :-) FWIW, it looks more like it was Zhang in comment 9 -- Zhang, can you elaborate on what makes you suspect ath5k?
Well, I can't see anything I can do here -- sending back to ACPI... :-(
It's great that kernel bugzilla is back. can you please verify if the problem still exists in the latest upstream kernel?
bug closed as there is no response from the bug reporter. please feel free to reopen it if the problem still exists in the latest upstream kernel.
Sorry, I hadn't noticed that bugzilla is online again and mails were caught in the spam filter. Yes, current kernels show a high wakeup rate too. Tested with v3.4 from kernel.org on gentoo. But as gentoo makes recreating it a little harder I tried some live CDs, too.
Created attachment 73428 [details] finnix-104 (v3.2.0-1) after connecting wlan powertop -d, /proc/stats, /proc/interrupts and dmesg output.
knoppix v6.7.1 shows a high wakeup rate, too. But that is kernel 3.0, finnix was the newest I could find. Meanwhile I experimented with kernel v3.4 and idle=xxx in the commandline, fully booted system (gnome, wlan, nfsclient): idle=mwait 85 wakeups idle=halt 85 wakeups idle=poll 110 wakeups idle=nomwait low wakeups, system freeze (no idle) around 50.000 wakeups, system freeze The freezes might be related to https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13155, I haven't backported the old EC driver to 3.4. While powertop does no longer report CPU entering any C-states the system is stable running idle=mwait since yesterday, suspends/resumes fine. Does this tell you something? Is this a workaround or the recommended way to use a tickless kernel in case of problems?
is this still an issue with the current upstream kernel?
I sold that laptop last week, beside this wakeup problem it had kernel panics half of the boots after changing wlan ap from d-link to zyxel. The last kernel I used was 3.4 with halt=mwait parameter. If someone still uses the Thinkpad R51e I recommend kernel 2.6.23 (no EC problems) and the separate madwifi package (which supports wlan powersave mode).
(In reply to comment #29) > I sold that laptop last week, well,, sorry about that. :( I'll close this bug as we can not debug any more without reproducing it. anyone can drop a note here if you can reproduce the problem on the same model laptop.