Re: [ext3][kernels >= 2.6.20.7 at least] KDE going comatose when FS is under heavy write load (massive starvation)

Linus Torvalds
2007-04-28T16:30:46Z

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007, Matthias Andree wrote:
>
> Another thing that is rather unpleasant (haven't yet tried fiddling with
> the dirty limits) is UDF to DVD-RAM - try rsyncing /home to a DVD-RAM,
> that's going to leave you with tons of dirty buffers that clear slowly
> -- "watch -n 1 grep -i dirty /proc/meminfo" is boring, but elucidating...

Now *this* is actually really really nasty.

There are worse examples. Try connecting some flash disk over USB-1, and
untar to it. Ugh.

I'd love to have some per-device dirty limit, but it's harder than it
should be.

Linus