From: Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: balance_dirty_pages broken
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 00:36:23 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20021017043623.GR8159@redhat.com> (raw)
Actually, I don't know if it's balance_dirty_pages fault or some other
part of the kernel's fault, but it is broken here. Failure mode is that
balance_dirty_pages would loop forever. Reason it would loop forever is
because the ps struct had a negative entry for nr_dirty. Breaking out of
the loop when ps.nr_dirty < 0 allows my machine to live. Now, *why*
ps.nr_dirty is < 0 is another issue. I have no clue. Well, I have one
clue, but no idea if it's valid or another red herring ;-) Machine only
has 256MB RAM, but has 4GB Highmem support enabled. Don't know if that
confuses the page counter stuff, having no actual highmem available.
If you need details about the machine, just ask. This was easy for me to
trigger by running mke2fs on a scsi disk. Would hit this every time.
--
Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com> 919-754-3700 x44233
Red Hat, Inc.
1801 Varsity Dr.
Raleigh, NC 27606
next reply other threads:[~2002-10-17 4:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2002-10-17 4:36 Doug Ledford [this message]
2002-10-17 5:09 ` balance_dirty_pages broken Andrew Morton
2002-10-17 5:22 ` Doug Ledford
2002-10-17 5:41 ` Doug Ledford
2002-10-17 5:54 ` Andrew Morton
2002-10-17 6:01 ` Doug Ledford
2002-10-17 6:09 ` Andrew Morton
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20021017043623.GR8159@redhat.com \
--to=dledford@redhat.com \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox