Re: Pauses in 2.5.44 (some kind of memory policy change?)

[Adam J. Richter]

Andrew Morton wrote:
>"Adam J. Richter" wrote:
>> 
>>         I run /usr/bin/mail to read my mail box file, which has about
>> 24 megabytes (in 2300 messages, mostly spam).  After this, about half
>> of the time, my keyboard and mouse will intermittently stop responding
>> for a second or two, maybe one or two times, and then everything
>> seems to be OK.  This happens *after* the mail spool has been read.
>> This did not happen in previous kernels (well, maybe 2.5.43, I can't
>> quite be sure about that one).
>> 
>>         The mail spool is on NFS, but I suspect the culprit might be
>> some kind of memory balancing change in 2.5.44.
>> 

>Clean pagecache usually doesn't cause much trouble...

>Please send a `vmstat 1' trace which covers the episode.

	Here are two traces.  Also, thanks for your help in pointing out
the new version of procps at surriel.com/procps.

   procs                      memory      swap          io     system      cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id
 0  0  0      0  52160  31420 135796    0    0     1     9   91    40  0  0 99
 0  0  0      0  52156  31420 135796    0    0     0    28 1054   267  1  1 98
 0  0  0      0  52156  31420 135796    0    0     0     0 1043   159  1  1 98
 1  0  2      0  45252  31420 142520    0    0     0     0 3573   349  9 38 53

...Started /usr/bin/mail around here...

 1  0  2      0  30024  31420 157636    0    0     0     0 6540   510 20 80  0
 1  0  2      0  14908  31420 172544    0    0     0     0 6433   499 16 84  0
 3  0  2      0   9196  31420 178172    0    0     0 17152 6939   259  3 97  0
 1  0  1      0   2452  31420 185112    0    0     0  4056 4061   278  9 91  0
 0  0  0      0   2636  31420 184848    0    0     0     0 1294   195  2  6 92

...Pause occurred around here...

 1  0  1      0   2664  31420 184848    0    0     0  4004 1766    55  0 44 56
 0  0  0      0   2676  31420 184848    0    0     0    40 1103   282  2  3 95
 0  0  0      0   2676  31420 184848    0    0     0     0 1064   169  0  0 100
 0  0  0      0   2676  31420 184848    0    0     0     0 1082   225  1  1 98
 0  0  0      0   2676  31420 184848    0    0     0     0 1097   263  1  1 98

Here is another run:

   procs                      memory      swap          io     system      cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id
 0  0  0      0   3992  30860 180424    0    0     1     9   92    40  0  0 99
 0  0  0      0   3988  30860 180424    0    0     0     0 1069   267  1  2 97
 0  0  0      0   3988  30860 180424    0    0     0     0 1032   136  1  0 99
 2  0  1      0   2464  29912 182696    0    0     4   380 1121   229 18 19 63
 2  0  3      0   4548  24556 185780    0    0     0  4732 1983   206 26 74  0
 3  0  1      0   4572  24532 185780    0    0     0 10172 2696    46  1 99  0
 0  0  0      0   3000  23460 188292    0    0     0   640 1160   248 12 18 70
...Pause occurred here...
 2  0  1      0   3348  23460 188292    0    0     0  9412 3409   109  0 58 41
 0  0  0      0   3352  23460 188292    0    0     0     4 1036   147  1  2 97
 0  0  0      0   3352  23460 188292    0    0     0     0 1032   153  0  1 99
 0  0  0      0   3352  23460 188292    0    0     0     0 1014   105  1  0 99
 1  0  0      0   3352  23460 188292    0    0     0     0 1089   435  1  1 98

Adam J. Richter     __     ______________   575 Oroville Road
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