> Mark Hahn wrote:
>
> > > Kernel: 2.4.0, no patches
> >
> > use 2.4.1-pre8. much better VM tuning.
>
> Thank you Mark, I will try that.
Yes, 2.4.1-pre8 fixes this, apparently completely. Something was severely broken
in 2.4.0 memory management.
> > > PIII 450MHz, 256MB RAM, Acus P3B-F motherboard (Intel 440BX)
> > > Mail going to Raid 1 device
> > > The file Inbox is only 2.9MB
> > > OS = Red Hat 7 with all updates, both home and work.
> > > Same with ppp 2.3.x and ppp 2.4.0
> > > Same whether work machine runs 2.2.16 or 2.4.0 kernel.
> >
> > any swap?
>
> Yes, 400MB swap, only a small fraction of it used; vmstat 5 looks okay
> and shows no understandable reason for the error message. Here are a
> few lines from vmstat: the point at which free memory jumps up is just
> after the "Write failed: Cannot allocate memory" message:
>
> 2 0 0 9276 1792 8952 110388 0 0 378 0 2400 295 11 26 63
>
> 2 0 0 9276 1760 8952 110420 0 0 0 0 492 319 6 2 92
>
> 3 0 0 9276 1596 8952 110588 0 0 96 0 754 326 8 5 87
>
> 2 1 0 9276 1620 8828 110692 0 0 751 207 5378 275 19 74 7
>
> 1 0 0 9276 26680 8828 91760 0 0 115 0 1094 307 9 11 80
>
> 2 0 0 9276 26680 8828 91760 0 0 0 0 120 318 4 1 95
>
> I have many hundreds of MB or GB of disk space in the various
> partititions. I will try the newer kernel, though I am interested in
> understanding what's going on here too.
>
> --
> Nick Urbanik, Dept. of Computing and Mathematics
> Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi)
> email: nicku@vtc.edu.hk
> Tel: (852) 2436 8576, (852) 2436 8579 Fax: (852) 2435 1406
> pgp ID: 7529555D fingerprint: 53 B6 6D 73 52 EE 1F EE EC F8 21 98 45 1C 23 7B
>
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-- Nick Urbanik, Dept. of Computing and Mathematics Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi) email: nicku@vtc.edu.hk Tel: (852) 2436 8576, (852) 2436 8579 Fax: (852) 2435 1406 pgp ID: 7529555D fingerprint: 53 B6 6D 73 52 EE 1F EE EC F8 21 98 45 1C 23 7B
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/