Re: 2.5.59-mm5

Andrew Morton
2003-01-25T22:33:07Z

Ed Tomlinson <tomlins@cam.org> wrote:
>
> On January 25, 2003 12:41 pm, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Ed Tomlinson <tomlins@cam.org> wrote:
> > > Hi Andrew,
> > >
> > > I am seeing a strange problem with mm5. This occurs both with and
> > > without the anticipatory scheduler changes. What happens is I see very
> > > high system times and X responds very very slowly. I first noticed this
> > > when switching between folders in kmail and have seen it rebuilding db
> > > files for squidguard. Here is what happened during the db rebuild (no
> > > anticipatory ioscheduler):
> >
> > Could you please try reverting the reiserfs changes?
> >
> > http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/2.5/2.5.59/2.5.59-mm5/broken-out/
> >reiserfs-readpages.patch
> >
> > and
> >
> > http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/2.5/2.5.59/2.5.59-mm5/broken-out/
> >reiserfs_file_write.patch
>
> Reverting reiserfs_file_write.patch seems to cure the interactivity problems.
> I still see the high system times but they in themselves are not a problem.
> Reverting the second patch does not change the situation. I am currently
> running with reiserfs_file_write.patch removed - so far so good.
>

Well, high system time _is_ a problem, isn't it? Do you always see that?

Or perhaps userspace monitoring tools are confusing I/O wait with CPU
busyness. Does a revert of

http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/2.5/2.5.59/2.5.59-mm5/broken-out/buffer-io-accounting.patch

make the numbers look different? If so, then it's a procps bug...

WRT the excessive copy_foo_user() times: I shall forward your initial email
to Oleg, thanks.