From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753463Ab0AYNGa (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:06:30 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752694Ab0AYNG3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:06:29 -0500 Received: from 0122700014.0.fullrate.dk ([95.166.99.235]:55038 "EHLO kernel.dk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750967Ab0AYNG3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:06:29 -0500 Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:06:27 +0100 From: Jens Axboe To: Jan Engelhardt Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: kswapd continuously active Message-ID: <20100125130627.GO13771@kernel.dk> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, Jan 23 2010, Jan Engelhardt wrote: > Hi, > > > with 2.6.32.2 on sparc64 I am seeing that there is a sync(1) process > busy in D state, with the following trace: > > sync D 000000000079299c 7552 4851 1 0x208061101000004 > Call Trace: > [000000000053ca58] bdi_sched_wait+0xc/0x1c > [000000000079299c] __wait_on_bit+0x58/0xb8 > [0000000000792a5c] out_of_line_wait_on_bit+0x60/0x74 > [000000000053ca3c] bdi_sync_writeback+0x6c/0x7c > [000000000053ca78] sync_inodes_sb+0x10/0xfc > [0000000000540dd0] __sync_filesystem+0x50/0x88 > [0000000000540ec8] sync_filesystems+0xc0/0x124 > [0000000000540f80] sys_sync+0x1c/0x48 > [0000000000406294] linux_sparc_syscall+0x34/0x44 > > kswapd is also active all the time, writing something to disk - LED is > blinking, and that's been going on for over half an hour despite the box > being not busy. How do I see what kswapd is still flushing to disk? Even > if all RAM (8 GB) was filled with dirty data, syncing it out would not > take that long - that is to say, the sync process should have long > exited. That doesn't sound good. What does /proc/meminfo say? What file systems are you using? -- Jens Axboe