Hi,
I ran some experiments with my kernel tracer (LTTng : http://ltt.polymtl.ca)
that showed missing interrupts. I wrote a small paper to show how to use my
tracer to solve this kind of problem which I presented at the CE Linux Form
last April.
http://tree.celinuxforum.org/CelfPubWiki/ELC2006Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=celf2006-desnoyers.pdf
It shows that, when the serial console is activated, the following code disables
interrupts for up to 15ms. On a system configured with a 250HZ timer (each 4ms),
it means that 3 scheduler ticks are lost.
In the current git :
kernel/printk.c: release_console_sem()
for ( ; ; ) {
-----> spin_lock_irqsave(&logbuf_lock, flags);
wake_klogd |= log_start - log_end;
if (con_start == log_end)
break; /* Nothing to print */
_con_start = con_start;
_log_end = log_end;
con_start = log_end; /* Flush */
spin_unlock(&logbuf_lock);
call_console_drivers(_con_start, _log_end);
-----> local_irq_restore(flags);
}
I guess interrupts are disabled for a good reason (to protect this spinlock for
being taken by a nested interrupt handler. One way I am thinking to fix this
problem would be to do a spin try lock and fail if it is already taken.