wtf has anyone seen this before ?

[someguy]

spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Losing too many ticks!
TSC cannot be used as a timesource.
Possible reasons for this are:
You're running with Speedstep,
You don't have DMA enabled for your hard disk (see hdparm),
Incorrect TSC synchronization on an SMP system (see dmesg).
Falling back to a sane timesource now.


wtf is this about ?
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done

[someguy]

{root@horus:/etc/conf.d}uptime ; uname -a ; free
13:32:04 up 5 days, 20:25, 2 users, load average: 0.59, 0.53, 0.32
Linux horus 2.6.11-gentoo-r4 #9 Fri Apr 8 05:39:07 UTC 2005 i686 VIA Nehemiah CentaurHauls GNU/Linux
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 449752 362872 86880 0 50844 149556
-/+ buffers/cache: 162472 287280
Swap: 257032 3828 253204
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done

[Chaosite]

Kernel .config?

[Pink]

Check your kernel config.

There is an option to enable if you are losing too many ticks, it is under:

Power Management ->
ACPI ->
Power management Timer Support (X86_PM_TIMER).

Part of the description says:

[someguy]

thanks
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done

[someguy]

btw what does that mean "losing to many ticks"
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done

[Pink]

Not confident enough to explain it in detail but if you google for: "losing too many ticks" (include the quote marks) quite a few pages (600+) come up.

Although a lot look like yours (asking about it), some seem to explain it as well.

HTH

[someguy]

[angrycoder]

there is an assembly call that can be made in C to RDTSC, which is basically a cpu cycle counter. This is the most accurate way to time something on a x86 machine, i believe it's accurate to less than 0.01 microseconds, or something really small like that. I don't know why you'd be getting that error though as cpu cycle speed changes often by small amounts (~1-2Mhz). I'm probably off on the specifics of this, but just google for RDTSC if you want to know more.

[someguy]

that clears it up some thanks guy
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done