From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261256AbULTMHx (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:07:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261485AbULTMHx (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:07:53 -0500 Received: from mail.aei.ca ([206.123.6.14]:33791 "EHLO aeimail.aei.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261256AbULTMHt (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:07:49 -0500 From: Ed Tomlinson Organization: me To: Nick Piggin Subject: Re: 2.6.10-rc3: kswapd eats CPU on start of memory-eating task Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:06:05 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.1 Cc: Andrew Morton , lista4@comhem.se, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mr@ramendik.ru, kernel@kolivas.org, riel@redhat.com References: <1329986.1103525472726.JavaMail.tomcat@pne-ps1-sn1> <20041219231250.457deb12.akpm@osdl.org> <41C682F1.20200@yahoo.com.au> In-Reply-To: <41C682F1.20200@yahoo.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200412200706.06534.edt@aei.ca> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Monday 20 December 2004 02:44, Nick Piggin wrote: > Andrew Morton wrote: > > Voluspa wrote: > > > >>Would be nice though if someone else could verify... > > > > > > Well I'd love to, but afaik the only workloads which we currently know of > > involve complex userspace apps which I have no experience running. > > > > Did anyone come up with a simple step-by-step procedure for reproducing the > > problem? It would be good if someone could do this, because I don't think > > we understand the root cause yet? > > > > I admit to generally being in the same boat as you with respect to > running complex userspace apps. > > However, based on this and other scattered reports, I'd say it seems > quite likely that token based thrashing control is the culprit. Based > on the cost/benefit, I wonder if we should disable TBTC by default for > 2.6.10, rather than trying to fix it, and try again for 2.6.11? > > Rik? Andrew? > > Also, it would be nice to have a sysctl to *completely* disable TBTC, > that would make testing easier. Except that disabling it (with 0) reportedly did not solve the problem. There is a possibility that its a more complex issue... Ed Tomlinson