F9 kernel or firefox periodic freeze?

[Chuck Anderson]

kernel-2.6.25.4-30.fc9.i686
firefox-3.0-0.60.beta5.fc9.i386

I've noticed "recently" that processes are getting stuck in D state 
for awhile, then they recover.  I caught firefox doing this, and here 
is what strace said.  strace showed the output stopping at the fsync 
call for a few seconds at a time.  While it was there, the entire 
browser was hung--no window refreshes.  The fsync happened a couple 
times as seen below.  After that, everything came back to life again.  
All in all, the browser stayed in the frozen state for about 10 or 20 
seconds.

I think I saw this problem happen with other applications too, like 
gnome-terminal, but I didn't get a strace of them.


Process 4015 attached - interrupt to quit
_llseek(36, 4329472, [4329472], SEEK_SET) = 0
write(36, 
"\r\0\0\0\6\0\347\0\f\240\tL\5\364\3,\0\347\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 
4096) = 4096
fsync(36)                               = 0
ftruncate64(50, 0)                      = 0
fstat64(36, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0640, st_size=4468736, ...}) = 0
_llseek(50, 0, [0], SEEK_SET)           = 0
write(50, "\331\325\5\371 
\241c\327\0\0\0\0\5\245\306\340\0\0\4C\0\0\20\0", 24) = 24
_llseek(50, 4095, [4095], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, "\0", 1)                      = 1
_llseek(50, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, "\0\0\4=", 4)                 = 4
_llseek(50, 4100, [4100], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, 
"\n\0\0\0011\6x\0\6x\6\200\6\210\6\220\6\230\6\240\6\250\6\260\6\270\6\300\6\310\6\320"..., 
4096) = 4096
_llseek(50, 8196, [8196], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, "\5\245\307S", 4)             = 4
_llseek(50, 8200, [8200], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, "\0\0\4(", 4)                 = 4
_llseek(50, 8204, [8204], SEEK_SET)     = 0
write(50, 
"\r\0\0\0\17\0\345\0\17*\16M\r\342\rx\f\344\f*\n\234\t\373\tP\10\256\6\357\5/"..., 
4096) = 4096
_llseek(50, 12300, [12300], SEEK_SET)   = 0
write(50, "\5\245\314K", 4)             = 4
fsync(50)                               = 0
_llseek(50, 8, [8], SEEK_SET)           = 0
write(50, "\0\0\0\2", 4)                = 4
fsync(50)                               = 0
_llseek(36, 4354048, [4354048], SEEK_SET) = 0
write(36, 
"\r\0\0\0\17\0\345\0\17*\0\345\16\277\16U\r\301\r\7\vy\n\330\n-\t\213\7\314\6\f"..., 
4096) = 4096
_llseek(36, 4440064, [4440064], SEEK_SET) = 0
write(36, 
"\n\0\0\0011\6x\0\6x\6\200\6\210\6\220\6\230\6\240\6\250\6\260\6\270\6\300\6\310\6\320"..., 
4096) = 4096
fsync(36)                               = 0
ftruncate64(50, 0)                      = 0
stat64("/var/tmp", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|S_ISVTX|0777, st_size=4096, ...}) 
= 0
access("/var/tmp", R_OK|W_OK|X_OK)      = 0
access("/var/tmp/etilqs_XBiTSw6BgOqWg2N", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such 
file or directory)
fstat64(36, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0640, st_size=4468736, ...}) = 0
gettimeofday({1213652378, 669828}, NULL) = 0
lseek(55, 323328, SEEK_SET)             = 323328
write(55, 
"\0\1\0\v\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\1HV\335\26HV\335\212Hw\332\351\0\0\4~\0\0\0\'"..., 
216) = 216
gettimeofday({1213652378, 670081}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1213652378, 670156}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN, revents=POLLIN}, 
{fd=15, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=19, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, 
{fd=20, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=21, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, 
{fd=18, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=65, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, 
events=POLLIN, revents=POLLIN}], 9, 0) = 2