Superspeed change

Joerg Sonnenberger has added a new timer method, for those who are seeing the “high-speed clock” problem:

“Add a new option “TIMER_USE_1″, which allows switching the primary heartbeat from i8254 timer 2 to timer 1. This also reactivates the console beep if TIMER_USE_1 is active.”

It’s “OPTIONS TIMER_USE_1” in your kernel config, if you want to build a kernel that uses this.

Finding the BGL

ps (from Matthew Dillon’s recent change) is now able to show which processes are and are not holding the “Big Giant Lock”, a symptom of multiprocessor use inherited from FreeBSD.

If you aren’t familiar with the BGL, Greg Lehey wrote a good explanation in Daemonnews. (look for the section labeled “The SMP Problem”)