Re: Strange load spikes on 2.4.19 kernel

From: Simon Kirby <sim@netnation.com>
To: Rob Mueller <robm@fastmail.fm>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@digeo.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jeremy Howard <jhoward@fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: Strange load spikes on 2.4.19 kernel
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 00:27:03 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20021013072703.GA12395@netnation.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <111e01c2727f$c62239a0$1900a8c0@lifebook>

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 04:14:18PM +1000, Rob Mueller wrote:

> > Not yet.  Yours is only the second report.  Possible report.
> > Please try ordered mode.  The below will fix journalled
> > mode, if this is indeed the source of the problem
> 
> We tried applying this patch, but no change either. Again, we've tried both
> journaled and ordered.

Hmmm.. Your vmstat output looked a lot like our mail server when we
recently tried switching it to ext3.  We also saw large load spikes, but
I did not investigate it very closely.  Have you tried mounting as ext2
to see if journalling is responsible?

If it's a mail server, does it use dotlocking (creation and deletion of
lots of small/empty files)?  I haven't had any time recently to look at
this any further, but at the time I had guessed that this had something
to do with the constant write-out...

Simon-

[        Simon Kirby        ][        Network Operations        ]
[     sim@netnation.com     ][     NetNation Communications     ]
[  Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. ]