From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S271225AbTHMAOf (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:14:35 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S271245AbTHMAOf (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:14:35 -0400 Received: from shawidc-mo1.cg.shawcable.net ([24.71.223.10]:23409 "EHLO pd4mo3so.prod.shaw.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S271225AbTHMAOc (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:14:32 -0400 Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 17:14:36 -0700 From: Ken Savage Subject: Re: High CPU load with kswapd and heavy disk I/O In-reply-to: <3F397CED.6060006@vgertech.com> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Message-id: <200308121714.36993.kens1835@shaw.ca> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-disposition: inline User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: <200308121136.11979.kens1835@shaw.ca> <200308121323.49081.kens1835@shaw.ca> <3F397CED.6060006@vgertech.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue August 12 2003 16:49, Nuno Silva wrote: > My guess is that this is the cause. LOWMEM pressure because of very > large directories... Relating to this, linux-2.6.0-test3-mm1 has Ingo's > 4G/4G memory split. Can you try this kernel, enable 4G/4G feature, and > report back? Something about the 2.6 (and the rmap patched 2.4) kernels causes lockouts on the server -- for reasons OTHER than kswapd. The server running the delete-old-files process runs hundreds of other CPU and disk I/O intensive processes/threads, and it doesn't look like 2.6 is yet able to handle the load. Unfortunately, the server is a production environment machine at a remote site, so lockouts/reboots/kernel panics are baaaad :( I've seen other mentions of kswapd/kupdated problems in 2.4.xx, but few mentions of solutions. Have people just learned to avoid the situations that trigger the mad thrashes? Ken