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To: Derek Glidden <dglidden@illusionary.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, <linux-mm@kvack.org>
Subject: Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps
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From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)
Date: 06 Jun 2001 12:52:07 -0600
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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