Bad, bad, bad VM behaviour in 2.4.10

Juan
2001-09-25T21:11:04Z

Hi!

My test is very simple. I have started X-Window and XMMS in order to
listen to some songs. Then, I have executed

dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=/dev/null

as root within a terminal, and I have got the following a few seconds
later:

Sep 25 22:05:55 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost last message repeated 2 times
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0xf0/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost last message repeated 2 times
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost kernel: VM: killing process xmms
Sep 25 22:06:00 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost last message repeated 11 times
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: VM: killing process xmms
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: VM: killing process kmix
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost last message repeated 2 times
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0xf0/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost last message repeated 3 times
Sep 25 22:06:04 localhost kernel: VM: killing process gpm
Sep 25 22:06:05 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:06 localhost last message repeated 6 times
sep 25 22:06:06 localhost su(pam_unix)[2548]: session closed for user
root
Sep 25 22:06:06 localhost kernel: VM: killing process sendmail
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: VM: killing process konsole
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: VM: killing process named
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: VM: killing process xmms
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost last message repeated 3 times
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: VM: killing process ksmserver
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:07 localhost kernel: VM: killing process kdeinit
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: VM: killing process X
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0xf0/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
f60
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost last message repeated 2 times
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: VM: killing process kdeinit
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:08 localhost kernel: VM: killing process startkde
Sep 25 22:06:09 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:09 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60
Sep 25 22:06:09 localhost kernel: VM: killing process named
Sep 25 22:06:09 localhost kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation
failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) from c012ff60

The /dev/hdc1 partition capacity is 6 GB. My root partition is on
/dev/hda5. My computer is a Pentium III with 384 MB of RAM.

BTW, the same test in 2.4.6 works fine without any problem.

Regards.