Re: Maybe a VM bug in 2.4.18-18 from RH 8.0?

Pete Zaitcev
2002-12-06T00:28:33Z

> I think I have a trigger for a VM bug in the RH kernel-bigmem-2.4.18-18

> By doing a large copy I can trigger this problem in about 30-40 minutes. At
> the end of that time, kswapd will start to get a larger % of CPU and
> the system load will be around 2-3. The system will feel sluggish at an
> interactive shell and it will take several seconds before a command like
> top would start to display. [...]

Check your /proc/slabinfo, just in case, to rule out a leak.

> cat /proc/meminfo
> total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
> Mem: 16671522816 444915712 16226607104 0 136830976 56520704
> Swap: 34365202432 0 34365202432
> MemTotal: 16280784 kB
> MemFree: 15846296 kB
> MemShared: 0 kB
> Buffers: 133624 kB
> Cached: 55196 kB
> SwapCached: 0 kB
> Active: 249984 kB
> Inact_dirty: 18088 kB
> Inact_clean: 480 kB
> Inact_target: 53708 kB
> HighTotal: 15597504 kB
> HighFree: 15434932 kB
> LowTotal: 683280 kB
> LowFree: 411364 kB
> SwapTotal: 33559768 kB
> SwapFree: 33559768 kB
> Committed_AS: 177044 kB

This is not interesting. Get it _after_ the box becomes sluggish.

Remember, the 2.4.18 stream in RH does not have its own VM, distinct
from Marcelo+Riel. So, you can come to linux-kernel for advice,
but first, get it all reproduced with Marcelo's tree with
Riel's patches all the same.

-- Pete