From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Lord Subject: Re: dirty pages (Was: Re: [PATCH] Prevent large file writeback starvation) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:50:02 -0500 Message-ID: <43F1293A.9050002@rtr.ca> References: <20060206040027.GI43335175@melbourne.sgi.com> <20060205202733.48a02dbe.akpm@osdl.org> <43E75ED4.809@rtr.ca> <43E75FB6.2040203@rtr.ca> <20060206121133.4ef589af.akpm@osdl.org> <20060213135925.GA6173@linuxtv.org> <20060213120847.79215432.akpm@osdl.org> <43F11BA3.8060904@rtr.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Johannes Stezenbach , dgc@sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from rtr.ca ([64.26.128.89]:57823 "EHLO mail.rtr.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964858AbWBNAuF (ORCPT ); Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:50:05 -0500 To: Andrew Morton In-Reply-To: <43F11BA3.8060904@rtr.ca> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Mark Lord wrote: > Andrew Morton wrote: >> Johannes Stezenbach wrote: >>> On Mon, Feb 06, 2006, Andrew Morton wrote: ... >>> Anyway, I temporarily deinstalled vmware (deleted the kernel >>> modules and rebooted; kernel is still tainted because of madwifi >>> if that matters). >>> The behaviour I see with vmware (long 'sync' time) doesn't seem >>> to happen without it so far ... > > Mmm.. Okay, all of my machines normally have VMWare-WS installed on them, > so that might just be the culprit. ... > Mmm.. so the intent is to affect only VMWare itself, not the rest of the > system while VMWare is dormant. I guess it's time to disable loading of > the VMWare modules and reboot. Bye bye uptime! Maybe I'll install > 2.6.16-rc3 while I'm at it. > > I'll follow-up with results in an hour or two. Okay, results are non-conclusive, because 2.6.16-rc3-git1 breaks VMWare; the vmmon module no longer compiles. Unstable kernel non-API issue again. So I'm back on 2.6.15 until that gets fixed. Cheers