Swap problems persisting?

Swap problems persisting?

[Peter Rasmussen]

I read in KT that virtual memory is a problem in recent 2.4 kernels.

I found myself in trouble with sudden shutdowns while playing DVDs (LiViD) and sometimes
running Mozilla 0.8.1 simultaneously, but running mozilla wasn't always necessary.

That was with all 2.4.5 and following ac kernels. I had performance troubles with 2.4.4
so I couldn't really push those, ie. the problems could be there as I well.

It seems though (from my perspective) that cutting out shmem and DRI stabilizes it a 
whole lot.

Right now I'm running 2.4.5-ac4 and have after a few hours not been able to crash it. I 
made it without DRI and support for shmem fs.

Are there still known problems with those, ie. /dev/shmem and DRI?

I have an ATI Rage Fury 128 with XFree86 4.0.2 in case it matters.

Please cc: me in case you reply, as I'm not on the list.

Thanks,

Peter

P.S. I always go back to 2.4.1 that was rock solid and the fastest kernel yet for my
     system :-)

Re: Swap problems persisting?

[Alan Cox]

> I found myself in trouble with sudden shutdowns while playing DVDs (LiViD) and sometimes
> running Mozilla 0.8.1 simultaneously, but running mozilla wasn't always necessary.
> 

Describe "sudden shutdown" more precisely first of all

Re: Swap problems persisting?

[Peter Rasmussen]

On Tue, 29 May 2001 22:55:43 Alan Cox wrote:

>> I found myself in trouble with sudden shutdowns while playing DVDs (LiViD) and sometimes
>> running Mozilla 0.8.1 simultaneously, but running mozilla wasn't always necessary.
>> 
>
>Describe "sudden shutdown" more precisely first of all
>
I'm terribly sorry for my unprecise description.

By "sudden shutdown" I meant that the machine freezes hard and when running X
using the Magic SysRq key combinations don't seem to work so power cycling was
the only option. It seems that it wasn't just the keyboard that had frozen
because a webserver I'm running on the machine also stopped serving pages.

Thanks,

Peter

Re: Swap problems persisting?

[Nitebirdz]

On Wed, 30 May 2001, Peter Rasmussen wrote:

>
> By "sudden shutdown" I meant that the machine freezes hard and when running X
> using the Magic SysRq key combinations don't seem to work so power cycling was
> the only option. It seems that it wasn't just the keyboard that had frozen
> because a webserver I'm running on the machine also stopped serving pages.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Peter


I ignore if this has been reported somewhere but I experience the very same
problem _only_ if the "using_dma" flag in hdparm is enabled.  It doesn't
only happen with DVDs, but apparently with several other devices such as
CD-ROMS, playing MP3s, reading from the /dev/pilot device...  My system
also freezes, I cannot access it via the network, I can only reboot and
when I take a look at the logs there is no clue at all as to what might have
happened.  I also have a report from a friend of mine who experienced the
same problem while burning CDs.  It also seemed to ba caused by hdparm.

Are you using hdparm too by any chance?  Can you try to reproduce the
problem _without_ enabling the flag?


Just my 2 cents.  I hope I'm not wasting anybody's time.  Now, I'll shut
up again and read what you guys have to say, as usual.  :-)



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