Re: [RFC][PATCH] Re: Linux 2.4.4-ac10

[Mike Galbraith]

On 20 May 2001, Zlatko Calusic wrote:

> Mike Galbraith <[e-mail]> writes:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fri, 18 May 2001, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
> >
> > > That's the main problem with static parameters.  The problem you are
> > > trying to solve is fundamentally dynamic in most cases (which is also
> > > why magic numbers tend to suck in the VM.)
> >
> > Magic numbers might be sucking some performance right now ;-)
> >
> [snip]
>
> I like your patch, it improves performance somewhat and makes things
> more smooth and also code is simpler.

Thanks for the feedback.  Positive is nice.. as is negative.

> Anyway, 2.4.5-pre3 is quite debalanced and it has even broken some
> things that were working properly before. For instance, swapoff now
> deadlocks the machine (even with your patch applied).

I haven't run into that.

> Unfortunately, I have failed to pinpoint the exact problem, but I'm
> confident that kernel goes in some kind of loop (99% system time, just
> before deadlock). Anybody has some guidelines how to debug kernel if
> you're running X?

Serial console and kdb or kgdb if you have two machines.. or uml?

> Also in all recent kernels, if the machine is swapping, swap cache
> grows without limits and is hard to recycle, but then again that is
> a known problem.

This one bugs me.  I do not see that and can't understand why.

	-Mike