severe slowdown with 2.4 series w/heavy disk access (revisited)

[Frank de Lange <lkml-frank@unternet.org>]

Hi'all,

Anyone remember this thread:

   "severe slowdown with 2.4 series w/heavy disk access"

   http://hypermail.spyroid.com/linux-kernel/archived/2001/week52/0266.html

It describes the tendency of 2.4 series kernels to slowdown under I/O load.
Well, that problem still seems to be alive and kicking. And no, it is not
related to reiserfs as I previously suggested in this thread:

   "Abysmal interactive performance on 2.4.linus", archived here:

   http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0111.1/0911.html

I removed the last reiserfs partition quite some time ago, currently running
mostly ext3 with ext2 root fs.

The systems use IDE disks, I don't have any SCSI-systems handy to test whether
this might be IDE-only (anyone?). Currently running 2.4.18 (with preempt and
lowlatency, but the problems are NOT related to those patches as they also hit
unpatched kernels) on SMP (Abit BP-6 yeah yeah I know but it does not seem to
be specific to the BP-6).

Does anyone else see these problems? Specifically, does anyone with a
SCSI-based system see this happening? Also, does anyone who uses only ext2 (no
ext3 or reiserfs, let alone jfs/xfs or any other journaling fs) see this?

Cheers//Frank

 [ BTW: I'm moving to Sweden, and am looking for a project/job in Västra
   Götaland, preferrably Göteborg... Anyone know anything interesting? ]
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