serial8250: too much work for irq4 on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
Sometimes, my server throws this error while running a python script:
serial8250: too much work for irq4
The error shows in syslog and in the script's log.
I looked at this - https://askubuntu.com/questions/97256/how-do-i-disable-messages-or-logging-from-printing-on-the-console-virtual-termin
So I tried running dmesg -D
However, the problem persists.
When this happens, any running scripts fail.
What do I do?
1 Reply
watrick
Linode Staff
I'm not familiar with irq errors, though I did some digging into the error that you posted. That message can often be a red herring when it comes to a server in a virtualized environment. The post that you linked to covers this somewhat, though I can certainly understand how this could be frustrating.
The command that you used, dmesg -D is meant to disable logging to the kernel buffer, though that doesn't mean that the underlying issue isn't still happening.
Since this is happening when you're running your script, you could try decreasing the verbosity of the logging. Also, you could try pointing its output to /dev/null. This way you can test to see if the issue is related to the script that you're running.
If that doesn't help, then you can run something like ps auwfx | less to see what is printing to the console. From there, you can then mitigate any other services running that could be interfering while you're running the script.