From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751265AbVHWEzZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:55:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751266AbVHWEzZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:55:25 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:52702 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751265AbVHWEzZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:55:25 -0400 Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:53:56 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: jerome lacoste Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: cache regresions with 2.6.1x ? Message-Id: <20050822215356.5f6a30fd.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <5a2cf1f60508220421d0914f8@mail.gmail.com> References: <5a2cf1f60508220421d0914f8@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 1.0.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org jerome lacoste wrote: > > I am on a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with 512 M and 1G disk cache. I > usually have at least 4 big applications running simultaneously: a > Java IDE, firefox, firefox and X. All that under the Gnome desktop. > > I've sometimes seen periods where my laptop goes kind of nuts. While > the cpu is still at 0%, the workload goes to 100% (as shown in the > gnome process monitor) (I haven't checked in other means, e.g. top or > /proc info as my machine is unusable). > > But with my latest upgrade to 2.6.12 from 2.6.10, the hanging happens > much more often. It lasts for over 30 seconds. > > Could this hanging be related to swapping? > Are there any VM regression lately that would make a kernel less > appropriate for desktop use? > How can I investigate that further? 10-20 lines of `vmstat 1' output while it's happening would help. If lots of system time is being consumed then the next step is to generate a kernel profile - Documentation/basic_profiling.txt