Cluster - spins/contentions and thread stuck in..

I get a number of question about contentions/"stuck in..". So here comes some explanation to:

• Contention
• Thread Stuck in
• What you can do about it
  

In 99% of the cases the contentions written out in the out file of the data nodes (ndb_X_out.log) is nothing to pay attention to.

sendbufferpool waiting for lock, contentions: 6000 spins: 489200
sendbufferpool waiting for lock, contentions: 6200 spins: 494721

Each spin is read from the L1 cache (4 cycles on a Nehalem (3.2GHz), so about a nanosecond).
1 spin = 1.25E-09 seconds (1.25ns)

In the above we have:
(494721-489200)/(6200-6000)= 27 spins/contention
Time spent on a contention=27 x 1.25E-09=3.375E-08 seconds (0.03375 us)

So we don't have a problem..

Another example (here is a lock guarding a job buffer (JBA = JobBuffer A, in short it handles signals for heartbeats and some other small things, all traffic goes over JobBuffer B).

jbalock thr: 1 waiting for lock, contentions: 145000 spins: 3280892543
jbalock thr: 1 waiting for lock, contentions: 150000 spins: 3403539479

(3403539479-3280892543)/(150000-145000)=24529 spins/contention
Time spent on a contention: 3.06613E-05 seconds (30.66us )

This is a bit higher than I would have expected and I think more analysis is needed. However, i tend not to get these contentions on a busy system.

Ndb kernel thread X is stuck in ..

Ndb kernel thread 4 is stuck in: Job Handling elapsed=100 Watchdog: User time: 82 System time: 667
Ndb kernel thread 4 is stuck in: Job Handling elapsed=200
Watchdog: User time: 82 System time: 668
Ndb kernel thread 4 is stuck in: Job Handling elapsed=300 Watchdog: User time: 82 System time: 669
Ndb kernel thread 4 is stuck in: Job Handling elapsed=400 Watchdog: User time: 82 System time: 670

Here the important is to look at how User time and System time behaves.
If User time is constant (as it is here - 82ms), but the System time is growing (667, 668 etc) which indicates that the OS kernel is busy.
Slow network? Sub-optimal kernel version? NIC drivers? swapping? some kernel process using too much cpu?

If User time is growing it is probably because the ndb kernel is overloaded.

What can you do about this?

• In config.ini:
  RealtimeScheduler=1
  LockExecThreadToCPU=[cpuids]
• check that cpuspeed is not running ( yum remove cpuspeed )
• .. and finally ask us to optimize more!
  

Also, pay attention if you get the contentions on an idle Cluster or a busy Cluster.
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