Re: Ongoing 2.4 VM suckage

Jeffrey W. Baker
2001-08-02T19:11:25Z

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Richard B. Johnson wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote:
>
> > This just in: Linux 2.4 VM still useless.
> >
> > I have 2 GB main memory and 4GB swap on a 2-way intel machine running a
> > variety of 2.4 kernels (we upgrade every time we have to reboot), and we
> > have to power cycle the machine weekly because too much memory usage + too
> > much disk I/O == thrash for hours.
> >
> > Gosh, I guess it is silly to use all of the available RAM and I/O
> > bandwidth on my machines. My company will just go out of their way to
> > do less work on smaller sets of data.
> >
>
> Are you sure it's not just come user-code with memory leaks? I use
> 2.4.1 on an embeded system with no disks, therefore no swap. It does
> large FFT arrays to make spectrum-analyzer pictures and it has never
> seen any problems with VM, in fact never any problems that can be
> blamed on the Operating System.
>
> Try 2.4.1 and see if your problems go away. If not, you probably
> have user-mode leakage.

My process are not small. They are huge. They take up nearly all
available memory. And then when a lot of file I/O kicks in, they get
swapped out in favor of RAM, then the thrashing starts, and the box goes
to la la land.

Are you saying that I can expect any userland process to be able to take
the box down? Shit, why don't I just go back to DOS?

-jwb