Re: Kernel 2.6.8.1: swap storm of death - nr_requests > 1024 on swap partition

Marcelo Tosatti
2004-08-31T16:52:50Z

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 07:50:07PM +0200, Karl Vogel wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 August 2004 12:23, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 04:51:00PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com> wrote:
> > > > What you think of this, which tries to address your comments
> > >
> > > Suggest you pass the scan_control structure down into pageout(), stick
> > > `inflight' into struct scan_control and use some flag in scan_control to
> >
> > Done the scan_control modifications.
>
> Took the patch for a spin.. it seems to behave ok here! No more OOMs.
>
> Quick question: is it to be expected that when I run a calloc(500Mb) on my
> system, when X is up and amarok is streaming live audio, that everything
> (apps) freezes for a few seconds until the calloc task exits?!
> The apps probably get pushed out to swap, but I would think that since these
> applications are running, that their pages are kept on the active list?!
> Setting swappiness to 0 doesn't make a difference.
>
> Is there a concept of a minimum working set size of an application? (kind of
> the reverse of an RSS limit)

Not really. A hungry memory app can starve the rest of the system.

One thing: what kernel version are you using?

I've seen extreme decreases in performance (interactivity) with hungry memory apps
with Rik's swap token code.