From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161112AbWLVKAV (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:00:21 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1946018AbWLVKAU (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:00:20 -0500 Received: from sorrow.cyrius.com ([65.19.161.204]:53635 "EHLO sorrow.cyrius.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161116AbWLVKAT (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:00:19 -0500 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:00:04 +0100 From: Martin Michlmayr To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Gordon Farquharson , Andrew Morton , Peter Zijlstra , Hugh Dickins , Nick Piggin , Arjan van de Ven , Andrei Popa , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Florian Weimer , Marc Haber , Martin Schwidefsky , Heiko Carstens , Arnd Bergmann Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: fix page_mkclean_one (was: 2.6.19 file content corruption on ext3) Message-ID: <20061222100004.GC10273@deprecation.cyrius.com> References: <20061220175309.GT30106@deprecation.cyrius.com> <97a0a9ac0612202332p1b90367bja28ba58c653e5cd5@mail.gmail.com> <97a0a9ac0612210117v6f8e7aefvcfb76de1db9120bb@mail.gmail.com> <20061221012721.68f3934b.akpm@osdl.org> <97a0a9ac0612212020i6f03c3cem3094004511966e@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org * Linus Torvalds [2006-12-21 20:54]: > But it sounds like I probably misunderstood something, because I thought > that Martin had acknowledged that this patch actually worked for him. That's what I thought too but now I can confirm what Gordon sees. But it's pretty weird. Our testcase is to run Debian installer on the NSLU2 arm device and apt-get would either segfault or hang at this particular spot in the installation (when apt is first run). With your patch, apt works correctly where it normally fails (at least for me). I stopped the installation at this point and repeated it several more times to make sure it's really working. And, yes, I can repeat this result. This time, however, I let the installer continue and it seems that with your patch apt now works where it failed in the past, but it hangs later on. It's pretty weird because I cannot even kill the process: sh-3.1# ps aux | grep 31126 root 31126 5.7 20.6 16240 6076 ? R+ 04:45 0:21 apt-get -o APT::Status-Fd=4 -o APT::Keep-Fds::=5 -o APT::Keep-Fds::=6 -q -y -f install popularity-contest root 31157 0.0 1.6 1516 492 ttyS0 S+ 04:51 0:00 grep 31126 sh-3.1# kill -9 31126 sh-3.1# kill -9 31126 sh-3.1# ps aux | grep 31126 root 31126 5.6 20.6 16240 6076 ? R+ 04:45 0:21 apt-get -o APT::Status-Fd=4 -o APT::Keep-Fds::=5 -o APT::Keep-Fds::=6 -q -y -f install popularity-contest root 31159 0.0 1.6 1516 492 ttyS0 S+ 04:51 0:00 grep 31126 sh-3.1# > Which sounded very similar to your setup (he has a 32M ARM box too, no?) It's the same device, a Linksys NSLU2. > Author: Andrew Morton This patch makes it even worse for me. > - if (TestClearPageDirty(page) && account_size) > + if (TestClearPageDirty(page) && account_size) { > + dec_zone_page_state(page, NR_FILE_DIRTY); > task_io_account_cancelled_write(account_size); > + } This hunk (on top of git from about 2 days ago and your latest patch) results in the installer hanging right at the start. The Linux kernel boots fine, the debian-installer is loaded into a ramdisk but when ncurses is being started it just hangs. Reverting this hunk makes it start again. Does that help or confuse you even more? -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/