Re: [2.4.17/18pre] VM and swap - it's really unusable

Petro
2002-01-07T20:29:51Z

On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 03:33:48PM +0100, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 23:15:31 -0800
> Petro <petro@auctionwatch.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 05, 2002 at 04:44:05PM +0100, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > > On Sat, 5 Jan 2002 01:24:42 -0800
> > > Petro <petro@auctionwatch.com> wrote:
> > > > "We" (Auctionwatch.com) are experiencing problems that appear to be
> > > > related to VM, I realize that this question was not directed at me:
> > > And how exactly do the problems look like?
> > After some time, ranging from 1 to 48 hours, mysql quits in an
> > unclean fashion (dies leaving tables improperly closed) with a dump
> > in the mysql log file that looks like:
> mysql question: is this a binary from some distro or self-compiled? If
> self-compiled can you show your ./configure paras, please?

It's the binary from mysql.com.

> > Which the Mysql support team says appears to be memory corruption.
> > Since this has happened on 4 different machines, and one of them had
> > memtest86 run on it (coming up clean), they seem (witness Sasha's
> > post) to think this may have something to do with the memory
> > handling in the kernel.
> There is a big difference between memory _corruption_ and a VM deficiency. No
> app can cope with a _corruption_ and is perfectly allowed to core dump or exit
> (or trash your disk). But this should not happen on allocation failures.
> Unless all your RAM is from the same series I do not really believe in mem
> corruption. I would try Martins small VM patch, as it looks like being a bit
> more efficient in low mem conditions and this may well be the case you are
> running into. This means 2.4.17 standard + patch.

Is there a reasonable chance that martins patch will get mainlined
in the near future? One of the big reasons I chose to upgrade to a
later kernel version (from 2.4.8ac<something>+LVMpatches+...) was
to get away from having to apply patches (and document which
patches and where to get them etc).

If this is the route I have to go, I'll do it but, well, I'm not
that comfortable with it.

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