From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 28 May 2001 23:57:29 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 28 May 2001 23:57:20 -0400 Received: from mail1.netcabo.pt ([212.113.161.135]:44555 "EHLO netcabo.pt") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 28 May 2001 23:57:06 -0400 Message-ID: <3B131E9E.70505@europe.com> Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 04:59:26 +0100 From: Vasco Figueira User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.4.5 i686; en-US; rv:0.9) Gecko/20010507 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: 2.4.4 kernel freeze for unknown reason Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi all, On Fri May 11 2001 - 13:45:24 EST, Vincent Stemen (linuxkernel@AdvancedResearch.org) wrote: >On Wednesday 09 May 2001 22:57, Jacky Liu wrote: >> The machine has been randomly lockup (totally freeze) for number of >> times without any traceable clue or error message. Usually the time >> frame between each lockup is between 24 to 72 hours. The screen just >> freeze when it's lockup (either in Console or X) and no "kernel >panic" >> type or any error message prompt up. All services (SSH, DNS, etc..) >> are dead when it's lockup (...) >I have been experiencing these same problems since version 2.4.0. >Although, I think it has improved a little in 2.4.4, it still locks >up. The problem seems to be related to memory management and/or swap, >and is seems to do it primarily on machines with over 128Mb of RAM. >Although, I have not tested systematically enough to confirm this. I have the same problem on a Toshiba satellite 4070, 366 celeron, 64M ram, redhat 7.1 and vanilla 2.4.5. Exactly the same bug description. Totally reproducible. >I have been monitoring the memory usage constantly with the gnome >memory usage meter and noticed that as swap grows it is never freed >back up. I can kill off most of the large applications, such as >netscape, xemacs, etc, and little or no memory and swap will be freed. >Once swap is full after a few days, my machine will lock up. After a few *hours*. Then I have (as you said) to do swapoff /dev/hda4 ; swapon -a in order to free the swap. If I do this, everything is fine... till it fills up again. >(...)I am >disappointed that we are now on the forth 2.4.x kernel version and >such as serious problem that has been there since 2.4.0 still exists. >This is pretty much a show stopper for having a production machine. Totally agree. This is quite a showstopper. Do_try_to_free_pages, err... sorry, fix_bug. Regards, Vasco Figueira