Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932217AbWEGTbj (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 May 2006 15:31:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932218AbWEGTbj (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 May 2006 15:31:39 -0400 Received: from hera.cwi.nl ([192.16.191.8]:18819 "EHLO hera.cwi.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932217AbWEGTbj (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 May 2006 15:31:39 -0400 Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 21:31:37 +0200 (MEST) From: Message-Id: <200605071931.k47JVbs18224@apps.cwi.nl> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: a Linux swap storm Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1645 Lines: 40 Earlier this evening I showed someone some pictures under X: % display -size 300x300 *.jpg (395 pictures, 315 MB). When display (from ImageMagick) started to repeat, I exited the program. At this moment the machine became unusable for twenty minutes of solid disk activity. No keystroke seen, not even the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill X, or Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch consoles, no mouse movement seen, vmstat did not produce any output for twenty minutes. The vmstat 5 output was procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 3 315728 3164 4424 3356 646 382 792 382 2425 182 0 5 0 95 1 1 316356 3856 4428 3572 454 366 507 366 2242 150 0 5 0 95 0 1 317540 3784 4456 3664 530 578 590 578 2403 179 0 7 0 93 0 1 306740 4240 4524 5372 127013 49878 129427 50061 405016 32901 0 4 0 95 1 1 306712 3992 4536 5372 30 0 30 3 450 122 2 1 94 2 0 0 306692 4016 4548 5372 18 0 18 3 402 134 2 2 96 1 0 0 306692 4016 4560 5372 0 0 0 3 257 35 1 1 98 0 The machine is vanilla 2.6.14, 256MB, 550MB swap. % rpm -qf `which X` xorg-x11-server-6.8.2-100 I wonder what precisely happened. Is this an X bug? Or a kernel bug? The effect is reproducible. Andries - 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/