Re: 2.4.4 kernel freeze for unknown reason

Mike Galbraith
2001-05-12T13:45:58Z

On Sat, 12 May 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> > > > If I turn swap off all together or turn it off and back on
> > > > periodically to clear the swap before it gets full, I do not seem to
> > > > experience the lockups.
> >
> > Why do I not see this behavior with a heavy swap throughput test load?
> > It seems decidedly odd to me that swapspace should remain allocated on
> > other folks lightly loaded boxen given that my heavily loaded box does
> > release swapspace quite regularly. What am I missing?
>
> If you swap really hard it seems much happier. If you vaguely swap stuff out
> over time then I too see the description above only I have Rik's dont deadlock
> on oom tweak so I see apps die.

Does any swap write/release if you hit such a box with heavy duty IO?
(pages on dirty list, swapspace allocated but writeout defered?)

If not, I'd be interested in seeing sysrq-m of a box in such a state..
particularly so if the total pages on active, dirty and clean lists is
only a small fraction of total pages. (information leak?)

-Mike