From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753666AbWL1RML (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:12:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753668AbWL1RML (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:12:11 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.25]:44819 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753640AbWL1RMK (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:12:10 -0500 Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 09:10:42 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: "Chen, Kenneth W" cc: David Miller , ranma@tdiedrich.de, gordonfarquharson@gmail.com, tbm@cyrius.com, Peter Zijlstra , andrei.popa@i-neo.ro, Andrew Morton , hugh@veritas.com, nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au, arjan@infradead.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: RE: [PATCH] mm: fix page_mkclean_one In-Reply-To: <000101c72a46$ee2296b0$bc84030a@amr.corp.intel.com> Message-ID: References: <000101c72a46$ee2296b0$bc84030a@amr.corp.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 27 Dec 2006, Chen, Kenneth W wrote: > > > > Running the test code, git bisect points its finger at this commit. Reverting > > this commit on top of 2.6.20-rc2 doesn't trigger the bug from the test code. > > > > [PATCH] mm: balance dirty pages > > > > Now that we can detect writers of shared mappings, throttle them. Avoids OOM > > by surprise. > > Oh, never mind :-( I just didn't create enough write out pressure when > test this. I just saw bug got triggered on a kernel I previously thought > was OK. Btw, this is an important point - people have long felt that the new page balancing in 2.6.19 was to blame, but you've just confirmed the long-held suspicion (at least by me) that it's not actually a new bug at all, it's just that the dirty page balancing causes writeback to happen _earlier_, and thus is better able to _show_ a bug that we've likely had for a long long time. Linus