Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

Eric W. Biederman
2001-06-06T18:56:04Z

Derek Glidden <dglidden@illusionary.com> writes:

> The problem I reported is not that 2.4 uses huge amounts of swap but
> that trying to recover that swap off of disk under 2.4 can leave the
> machine in an entirely unresponsive state, while 2.2 handles identical
> situations gracefully.
>

The interesting thing from other reports is that it appears to be kswapd
using up CPU resources. Not the swapout code at all. So it appears
to be a fundamental VM issue. And calling swapoff is just a good way
to trigger it.

If you could confirm this by calling swapoff sometime other than at
reboot time. That might help. Say by running top on the console.

Eric