Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com> writes:
Normally top reports CPU line, sy at 0.4% when idle. If I format an
external Firewire disk as btrfs and mount it, it remains at 0.4%. If I
reformat as XFS and mount it, again top reports sy at 0.4%. However,
if I reformat as ext4 and mount it, sy runs at 3.5%. These two
processes are now at the top of top's results:
kworker/1:2
kworker/0:4
Each uses on average 1.9% CPU. The light on the external drive flashes
4x per second. There are no processes using the disk at all while this
is going on. If I umount it, the pulsing stops. If I remount it, the
pulsing resumes as does the slightly higher CPU consumption.
This doesn't happen with the same hardware mounted XFS or btrfs or
HFS+.
Odd?
Sounds like lazy itable init. Try mkfs -t ext4 -E lazy_itable_init=0.
Cheers,
Jeff