lag spike from background thread activity (was: 1.02 Linux Server Wierdness)

[ScratchMonkey]

--On Saturday, July 16, 2005 11:59 AM -0500 Atomm Nihilo - Gamers Radio 
<atomm at gamersradio.com> wrote:

> Thanks for all the help fellas. Here is the real problem I am trying to
> understand. This is a Dual Xeon 2.6 HT system. In effect 2 CPU's plus 2
> Virtual CPU's. I turned everything off except for BF2, TeamSpeak and
> Apache/MySQL. This system has 1GB of memory.

I've got a similar system, but with 3 GB. But I haven't been listed in the 
browser yet so I haven't been able to give it any real workout.

> Watching top, I can see one of the threads (other than the main)
> accessing the CPU. When this happens, the players report a lag spike.
> It's like clockwork. That leads me to believe there is a problem with
> something on the server. Given how beefy this server is, I am concerned.

Good find. The hard part here is figuring out how to identify the thread 
and what it's doing. Maybe knowing this, DICE can bring the debugger to 
bear and see what it's doing. It would be nice if top showed the current 
address of each thread or some other piece of info to identify which thread 
is which to the coders.