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

Karl Vogel
2004-08-31T17:50:07Z

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)