From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 8 Sep 2001 12:48:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 8 Sep 2001 12:48:04 -0400 Received: from ns.ithnet.com ([217.64.64.10]:62728 "HELO heather.ithnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Sat, 8 Sep 2001 12:47:57 -0400 Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 18:47:58 +0200 From: Stephan von Krawczynski To: Alan Cox Cc: mcelrath@draal.physics.wisc.edu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: "Cached" grows and grows and grows... Message-Id: <20010908184758.696bb9d1.skraw@ithnet.com> In-Reply-To: In-Reply-To: <20010907191349.457cad95.skraw@ithnet.com> Organization: ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.6.1 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 23:15:36 +0100 (BST) Alan Cox wrote: > > To tell you the honest truth: you are not alone in cosmos (with this problem) > > ;-) > > To give you that explicit hint for saving money: do not buy mem, it will be > > eaten up by recent kernels without any performance gain or other positive > > impact whatsoever. > > Pick up a 2.4.9-ac kernel, and you shouldnt be seeing the problem (I say > shouldnt, I'm not 100% convinced its all under control) VERY FUNNY, Alan! 2.4.9-ac9: __alloc_pages: /* No luck.. */ // printk(KERN_ERR "__alloc_pages: %lu-order allocation failed.\n", order) return NULL; If there is no printk, you will obviously not notice the problem. You can bet your car on not "seeing the problem". > > Try using 2.4.4, if it doesn't succeed, forget 2.4 and use 2.2.19. That works. > > Unfortunately you may have to completely reinstall your system when going back > > to 2.2. > > That should not be needed at all. Well, as long as you do not use any features that made you install 2.4 before, e.g. files > 2GB and some others. Of course, if you do not use these, you might be better of with 2.2 anyway. That was not a very convincing comment, Alan. But I must admit one thing: 2.4.9-ac9 runs smoother in my test. There are no delays experienced during which the system desperately seeks mem. In fact I can see a lot of inact_clean nearly all the time (a lot means 200-600 MB). Nevertheless there _is_ a problem, because nfs still fails on low mem situation when option "no_subtree_check" is _off_/not used. I will have some closer looks on ac tree. Regards, Stephan