Cpu 100% with irqbalance process on leap 15.6

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello

I have sporadically cpu 100% with irqbalance process on Intel(R) Core™ Ultra 9 185H
CPU package temperature goes up to 100 degrees.
Killing all running stuff like firefox etc. leaving only konsole active will not help only a reboot helps.

With the following kernels tried on leap 15.6

6.4.0-150600.23.7-default
6.4.0-150600.23.17-default
6.10.6-lp155.3.gc1ec311-default

A part if working right (without irqbalance 100% cpu load) syslog is filled with messages like

/usr/sbin/irqbalance: thermal: event - CPU 0, efficiency 164, perf 1020.
...
/usr/sbin/irqbalance: thermal: event - CPU 21, efficiency 164, perf 1020.

There was a thread

but as I understood, this was solved in Dec 2023

I also tried to set
OPTIONS="--quiet"
in file
/etc/sysconfig/irqbalance
but did not solve anything.

Is this a general problem or only on new intel processor?
Any hints?

2

I had this problem as well. See here. It was fixed at that time and I have not seen any problem with it since then.

You can kill the process while investigating the issue; it is not a critical one. Unless your system is especially busy, you’ll not notice a performance difference.

3

We’ve decided long ago it’s not required for our every now and then use, so disabled.

It can be useful if using a machine requiring constant multi-cpu grinding, among many other computers on a network.

What is the machine being used for?

4

Mostly desktop usage and android development but not much

5

New to me irqbalance and I checked my log (on Tumbleweed ( but I get only:

> sudo journalctl -b -1 | grep irqbalance
Aug 31 07:52:18 localhost systemd[1]: Started irqbalance daemon.
Aug 31 07:52:18 localhost irqbalance[1052]: thermal: failed to receive messages.
Aug 31 07:52:18 localhost irqbalance[1052]: Failed to initialize thermal events.
Sep 01 00:37:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Stopping irqbalance daemon...
Sep 01 00:37:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: irqbalance.service: Deactivated successfully.
Sep 01 00:37:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Stopped irqbalance daemon.
Sep 01 00:37:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: irqbalance.service: Consumed 4.002s CPU time.

So not working at all?

Anyhow I had a look at:

And saw there you could run sudo irqbalance --debug. Did so and that prints out every 30 seconds a ~30 line dump for “Package 0”. Try to run that and see what it is printing when the problem happens.

6

You mention konsole in your original post, so I assume you’re using KDE for the DE (?).

If yes, are you using Wayland? If yes, switch the login to use X11 / KDE. Any change?

Wayland has a tendency to influence oddball issues.

Another test would be to create a brand new user, then log in as that user … does the issue continue?

There was a time not long ago that the Baloo system was causing CPU havoc for folks. Next time your CPU goes way up, check for any high usage for the Baloo system. (we’ve disabled Baloo because its purpose isn’t useful for our requirements).

7

It is likely running anyway. Try these commands:

$ ps -ax | grep -i irqbalance
263:   1753 ?        Ssl    0:01 /usr/sbin/irqbalance

and

$ sudo systemctl status irqbalance
● irqbalance.service - irqbalance daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/irqbalance.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-08-31 11:21:34 MST; 1 day 1h ago
 Invocation: b208d0f26f58437081d413abe92bfaa8
       Docs: man:irqbalance(1)
             https://github.com/Irqbalance/irqbalance
   Main PID: 1753 (irqbalance)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 38334)
        CPU: 1.837s
     CGroup: /system.slice/irqbalance.service
             └─1753 /usr/sbin/irqbalance
8

Thanks @jimbobrae, yes, for me on tumbleweed irqbalance is running although there seem to be some problems with thermal but let me not hijack this topic for that.

I am wondering @tkmbe was able to run with “–debug”

9

Yes I’m using kde/X11…

10

Yes debug mode works for me.
I have gone back to kernel 6.4.0-150600.23.17-default from 6.10.6-lp155.3.gc1ec311-default and the problem until now has not occurred.
I will also disable ballo. I don’t need this. In fact I had it disabled in 15.4…
I have now disabled irqbalance, I think I don’t need it…

Thanks for help!

1 Like
11

I read somewhere (possibly Fedora-specific?) that irqbalance shouldn’t be installed if you’re expecting it to do something out-the-box without additional configuration; or rather that it doesn’t perform better than the kernel itself nowadays.

There’s also a kernel parameter threadirqs that (without research) sounds like it would multi-thread IRQs in a similar concept.

12

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