Re: "Cached" grows and grows and grows...

Stephan von Krawczynski
2001-09-08T16:48:14Z

On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 23:15:36 +0100 (BST) Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
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