Re: Linux 2.4.1-ac7

[Torben Mathiasen <torben@kernel.dk>]

On Thu, Feb 08 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > 	ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/
> > 
> > 2.4.1-ac7
> > o	Rebalance the 2.4.1 VM				(Rik van Riel)
> > 	| This should make things feel a lot faster especially
> > 	| on small boxes .. feedback to Rik
> 
> I'd really like feedback from people when it comes to this
> change. The change /should/ fix most paging performance bugs
> because it makes kswapd do the right amount of work in order
> to solve the free memory shortage every time it is run.
 
Rik,

Just installed ac7 and after some 30 minutes of unpacking
kernel-sources and diffing patches, I left my computer unattended
for about 1 hour. When I came back the system was unusable (like it 
was frozen), and /var/log/messages just displayed messages of the
type:

Feb  8 22:54:40 fry kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 455 (xmms).
...

The OOM killer killed most of my apps, and finally X. I had to reboot
in order to get the system back. I've been running ac1-ac6 since they
came out with no problems, so I guess its the VM hack that is buggy.

This is on an AMD K7 1200Mhz, 512MB Ram, ATA100. Nothing big was
running at the time (xchat, xmms, mozilla, gnome, x, a few xterms).

I'll do some more testing tomorrow and provide any further information
you might need.



-- 
Torben Mathiasen <torben@kernel.dk>
Linux ThunderLAN maintainer 
http://opensource.compaq.com

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