Question about memory pressure freezes

[Zan Lynx <zlynx@acm.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 787 bytes --]

I have often experienced nearly full system freezes for up to five
seconds at a time while memory is being flushed to disk.

I'm not sure if this is a general Linux problem or a Reiser4 problem, so
I thought I'd ask.

A sysrq-T during the freeze shows many processes trying to acquire a
memory page, and Reiser4 flushing atoms and doing sync things.

My working theory right now is that Reiser4 spends time flushing a lot
of data at once before returning.

If I am right about that, would it not make more sense to flush a few
pages, return to the kernel, flush a few more pages, return to the
kernel, etc, etc?  That way programs could get a bit of RAM and make
some progress.

Of course I could be completely off about what's going on.
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx@acm.org>

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]