kacpid + kacpi_notify thrash CPU on CentOS 6?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

Hi,

I have a new computer with CentOS 6. I happened to start a rather long task
that I think is memory-, but not CPU-, intensive. Just for the fun of it I
started top, and was very surprised to see that the first two lines were
always

 PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+
COMMAND

   38 root     20   0     0    0    0 R 66.2  0.0   2671:58
kacpid

   39 root     20   0     0    0    0 S 32.6  0.0   1320:31
kacpi_notify

It looks a lot like various issues with laptops from way back, e.g.,
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=451896,
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=454954, etc. This one is a
regular PC working as a server in a cool server room, just arrived about a
week ago. 2CPUs, 4G of RAM, 2 HDs in software RAID1, nothing special.
Kernel 2.6.32-220.23.1.el6.x86_64 (RedHat).

I understand it may be a BIOS issue with ACPI implementation, or it may be
a kernel bug (though I'd expect those to be sorted out by now, given that
the general issue is old). I have not yet tinkered with the BIOS or the
kernel (may do it on Sunday when customers sleep), but I am vaguely
concerned that if I manage to switch ACPI off in the BIOS I may miss real
overheating (of which this may be a symptom - ?).

dmesg contains stuff like

ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
ata1.00: ACPI _SDD failed (AE 0x5)
ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata3.00: ACPI _SDD failed (AE 0x5)
ata2.00: ACPI _SDD failed (AE 0x5)
ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
ata1.00: ACPI _SDD failed (AE 0x5)
ata1.00: ACPI: failed the second time, disabled
ata1.00: ATA-8: ST500DM002-1BD142, HP73, max UDMA/100
ata1.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST500DM002-1BD14 HP73 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata3.00: ACPI _SDD failed (AE 0x5)
ata3.00: ACPI: failed the second time, disabled

/var/log/messages has similar messages plus basic information stuff that
does not tell me much. Any advice from more experienced admins than me?

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | oleg at goldshmidt.org
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