Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-26,: 2.2.16 and large process failures

# 2.2.16 and large process failures

brian@worldcontrol.com
Tue, 27 Jun 2000 17:35:09 -0700

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I run a number of large processes, consuming 1 GB of real
memory and up 4 GB of swap, that run for up to 3 days each.

A machine upgraded from 2.2.15 to 2.2.16 is no longer able
to complete the larger of the tasks.

The particular machine has 896MB of real memory and
8GB of swap.

Memory: 906776k/917440k available

% swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/hdc1 partition 2056280 0 1
/dev/hdc2 partition 2056312 0 2
/dev/hdc3 partition 2056312 0 3
/dev/hdc4 partition 2080408 0 4

The four partitions listed above are 2GB each as shown, interestingly
top only reports:

Swap: 4055008K av, 0K used, 4055008K free

Don't know why the difference.

In any case, runs under 2.2.16 die of memory exhaustion rather
before they should.

A graph of the event is available at:

http://www.litzinger.com/memory.png (3K)
http://www.litzinger.com/memory.jpg (25K)

(scratch out the % on the charts)

The application had just released a few hundred MBs and was in the
mist of allocating lots more.

It looks like the application was just about to go over 1GB of
allocated memory, though it had already gone beyond the 896MB of
real memory, and had been using the swap for the previous 6 hours.

The system is an Athlon 533 (all in spec). The kernels are compiled
with the 1GB maximum physical memory model.

The machines running 2.2.15 can run to completion using all of memory and
1 to 3GBs of swap.

    --
    Brian Litzinger <brian@litzinger.com>

        Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved

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