Re: 2.4.4 kernel freeze for unknown reason

Vasco Figueira
2001-05-29T03:57:29Z

Hi all,

On Fri May 11 2001 - 13:45:24 EST, Vincent Stemen
(linuxkernel@AdvancedResearch.org) wrote:

>On Wednesday 09 May 2001 22:57, Jacky Liu wrote:

>> The machine has been randomly lockup (totally freeze) for number of
>> times without any traceable clue or error message. Usually the time
>> frame between each lockup is between 24 to 72 hours. The screen just
>> freeze when it's lockup (either in Console or X) and no "kernel >panic"
>> type or any error message prompt up. All services (SSH, DNS, etc..)
>> are dead when it's lockup
(...)

>I have been experiencing these same problems since version 2.4.0.
>Although, I think it has improved a little in 2.4.4, it still locks
>up. The problem seems to be related to memory management and/or swap,
>and is seems to do it primarily on machines with over 128Mb of RAM.
>Although, I have not tested systematically enough to confirm this.

I have the same problem on a Toshiba satellite 4070, 366 celeron, 64M
ram, redhat 7.1 and vanilla 2.4.5. Exactly the same bug description.
Totally reproducible.

>I have been monitoring the memory usage constantly with the gnome
>memory usage meter and noticed that as swap grows it is never freed
>back up. I can kill off most of the large applications, such as
>netscape, xemacs, etc, and little or no memory and swap will be freed.
>Once swap is full after a few days, my machine will lock up.

After a few *hours*.

Then I have (as you said) to do swapoff /dev/hda4 ; swapon -a in order
to free the swap. If I do this, everything is fine... till it fills up
again.

>(...)I am
>disappointed that we are now on the forth 2.4.x kernel version and
>such as serious problem that has been there since 2.4.0 still exists.
>This is pretty much a show stopper for having a production machine.

Totally agree. This is quite a showstopper. Do_try_to_free_pages, err...
sorry, fix_bug.

Regards,

Vasco Figueira