lots of futex_wait calls

[skunkwerk]

On Jun 6, 10:03 am, André Malo <auch-ic... at g-kein-spam.com> wrote:
> skunkwerkwrote:
> > I've got a python program written for the django web framework that
> > starts about 100 threads.  When I start the server, it sometimes eats
> > up 100% of the CPU for a good minute or so... though none of the
> > threads are CPU-intensive
>
> > doing a strace on the program, i found lots of calls like this:
>
> > select(5, [4], [], [], {1, 0}) = 0 (Timeout)
> > futex(0x86a3ce0, FUTEX_WAIT, 0, NULL) = 0
>
> > i've read the man page for futex... but is this normal?
>
> More or less. Most of the futex calls (if not all) are grabbing or releasing
> the global interpreter lock (GIL).
>
> It's usually helpful to increase the thread-schedule-checkinterval in order
> to lessen the system load (especially the number of context switches). See
> sys.setcheckinterval.
>
> nd

I've set the checkinterval to 200, and it seems to be ok... but after
one or two days, the python processes will start hogging 100% of the
CPU and bring the system to a crawl.  I ran strace again, and all of
the calls are:

select(5, [4],[],[],{1,0}) = 0 (Timeout)
futex(0x877d0c8, FUTEX_WAIT, 0 NULL) = 0
futex(0x877d0c8, FUTEX_WAKE,1) = 0

is there any way to find out what's causing this?  would you need to
look at my threading code?

thanks,
imran