Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965083AbVINWqN (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:46:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965089AbVINWqM (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:46:12 -0400 Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:43398 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965083AbVINWqL (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:46:11 -0400 Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:44:56 -0400 From: "Theodore Ts'o" To: Andrew Morton Cc: Manfred Spraul , ak@suse.de, dgc@sgi.com, bharata@in.ibm.com, dipankar@in.ibm.com, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: VM balancing issues on 2.6.13: dentry cache not getting shrunk enough Message-ID: <20050914224456.GA32082@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Ts'o , Andrew Morton , Manfred Spraul , ak@suse.de, dgc@sgi.com, bharata@in.ibm.com, dipankar@in.ibm.com, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20050911105709.GA16369@thunk.org> <20050913084752.GC4474@in.ibm.com> <20050913215932.GA1654338@melbourne.sgi.com> <200509141101.16781.ak@suse.de> <4327EA6B.6090102@colorfullife.com> <20050914024313.1e70f2a3.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050914024313.1e70f2a3.akpm@osdl.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.10i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1529 Lines: 33 On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 02:43:13AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > Manfred Spraul wrote: > > > > One tricky point are directory dentries: As far as I see, they are > > pinned and unfreeable if a (freeable) directory entry is in the cache. > > > > Well. That's the whole problem. > > I don't think it's been demonstrated that Ted's problem was caused by > internal fragementation, btw. Ted, could you run slabtop, see what the > dcache occupancy is? Monitor it as you start to manually apply pressure? > If the occupancy falls to 10% and not many slab pages are freed up yet then > yup, it's internal fragmentation. The next time I can get my machine into that state, sure, I'll try it. I used to be able to reproduce it using normal laptop usage patterns (Lotus notes running under wine, kernel builds, apt-get upgrade's, openoffice, firefox, etc.) about twice a week with 2.6.13-rc5, but with 2.6.13, it happened once or twice, but since then I haven't been able to trigger it. (Predictably, not after I posted about it on LKML. :-/) I've been trying a few things in the hopes of deliberately triggering it, but so far, no luck. Maybe I should go back to 2.6.13-rc5 and see if I have an easier time of reproducing the failure case. - Ted - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/