Re: -rc7 Re: Linux 2.4.21-rc6

Rob Landley
2003-06-04T20:37:01Z

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On Wednesday 04 June 2003 08:20, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04 2003, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 02:00:53PM +0200, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > since you have a single writer and maybe a reader or two. The single
> > > writer cannot starve anyone else.
> >
> > unless you're changing an atime and you've to mark_buffer_dirty or
> > similar (balance_dirty will write stuff the same way from cp and the
> > reader then).
>
> Yes you are right, could be.
>
> But the whole thing still smells fishy. Read starvation causing mouse
> stalls, hmm.

If reads from swap get starved, you can have interactive dropouts in just
about anything.

My desktop is usually pretty deep into swap. I upgrade to machines with four
times as much memory, but that usually means the graphics resolution went up
and it just lets me keep more windows open in more desktops. (Currently
six.)

My record was driving the system so deep into swapping frenzy it was still
swapping when I came back from lunch. Really. This was under 2.4.4, though.
On RH 9/2.4.20-? my record is a little under five minutes of "frozen
thrashing on swap" before I got control of the system back. That's just a
"go for a soda" break. And at least the mouse cursor never froze for more
than a couple seconds at a time during that, even if the desktop was ignoring
me... :)

Haven't tried 2.5 on anything but servers yet, but it's on my to-do list...

Rob

(I am the VM subsystem's worst nightmare. Bwahaha.)

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Script started on Wed 04 Jun 2003 04:25:29 PM EDT
^[]0;landley@localhost:~[landley@localhost landley]$ cat /proc/meminfo
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 261390336 247234560 14155776 0 9351168 80461824
Swap: 542859264 276152320 266706944
MemTotal: 255264 kB
MemFree: 13824 kB
MemShared: 0 kB
Buffers: 9132 kB
Cached: 43372 kB
SwapCached: 35204 kB
Active: 182324 kB
ActiveAnon: 131940 kB
ActiveCache: 50384 kB
Inact_dirty: 19164 kB
Inact_laundry: 14400 kB
Inact_clean: 3512 kB
Inact_target: 43880 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 255264 kB
LowFree: 13824 kB
SwapTotal: 530136 kB
SwapFree: 260456 kB
^[]0;landley@localhost:~[landley@localhost landley]$ cat /proc/slabinfo
slabinfo - version: 1.1
kmem_cache 65 70 108 2 2 1
ip_fib_hash 11 112 32 1 1 1
urb_priv 0 0 64 0 0 1
journal_head 57 770 48 1 10 1
revoke_table 2 250 12 1 1 1
revoke_record 0 112 32 0 1 1
clip_arp_cache 0 0 128 0 0 1
ip_mrt_cache 0 0 128 0 0 1
tcp_tw_bucket 0 90 128 0 3 1
tcp_bind_bucket 4 224 32 1 2 1
tcp_open_request 0 30 128 0 1 1
inet_peer_cache 0 58 64 0 1 1
ip_dst_cache 5 75 256 1 5 1
arp_cache 2 30 128 1 1 1
blkdev_requests 256 270 128 9 9 1
dnotify_cache 0 0 20 0 0 1
file_lock_cache 0 41 92 0 1 1
fasync_cache 2 200 16 1 1 1
uid_cache 2 112 32 1 1 1
skbuff_head_cache 176 2265 256 32 151 1
sock 589 720 1280 220 240 1
sigqueue 0 29 132 0 1 1
kiobuf 0 0 64 0 0 1
cdev_cache 26 232 64 2 4 1
bdev_cache 4 58 64 1 1 1
mnt_cache 13 58 64 1 1 1
inode_cache 2395 3647 512 519 521 1
dentry_cache 2477 4050 128 135 135 1
dquot 0 0 128 0 0 1
filp 2364 2370 128 79 79 1
names_cache 0 14 4096 0 14 1
buffer_head 16649 30360 128 789 1012 1
mm_struct 173 210 256 14 14 1
vm_area_struct 5840 7770 128 238 259 1
fs_cache 78 116 64 2 2 1
files_cache 78 112 512 15 16 1
signal_cache 243 290 64 5 5 1
sighand_cache 235 253 1408 22 23 4
task_struct 0 0 1792 0 0 1
pte_chain 1958 7590 128 83 253 1
size-131072(DMA) 0 0 131072 0 0 32
size-131072 0 0 131072 0 0 32
size-65536(DMA) 0 0 65536 0 0 16
size-65536 0 0 65536 0 0 16
size-32768(DMA) 0 0 32768 0 0 8
size-32768 0 0 32768 0 0 8
size-16384(DMA) 0 0 16384 0 0 4
size-16384 0 16 16384 0 16 4
size-8192(DMA) 0 0 8192 0 0 2
size-8192 4 19 8192 4 19 2
size-4096(DMA) 0 0 4096 0 0 1
size-4096 35 75 4096 35 75 1
size-2048(DMA) 0 0 2048 0 0 1
size-2048 8 86 2048 5 43 1
size-1024(DMA) 0 0 1024 0 0 1
size-1024 59 124 1024 18 31 1
size-512(DMA) 0 0 512 0 0 1
size-512 43 200 512 11 25 1
size-256(DMA) 0 0 256 0 0 1
size-256 43 1200 256 8 80 1
size-128(DMA) 1 30 128 1 1 1
size-128 707 3240 128 33 108 1
size-64(DMA) 0 0 128 0 0 1
size-64 377 1170 128 30 39 1
size-32(DMA) 17 58 64 1 1 1
size-32 397 754 64 10 13 1
^[]0;landley@localhost:~[landley@localhost landley]$
Script done on Wed 04 Jun 2003 04:25:42 PM EDT