Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161116AbWHDIwl (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Aug 2006 04:52:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030224AbWHDIwl (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Aug 2006 04:52:41 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:51125 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030209AbWHDIwk (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Aug 2006 04:52:40 -0400 Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 01:52:21 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: "Maarten Maathuis" Cc: shaggy@austin.ibm.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: heavy file i/o on ext3 filesystem leads to huge ext3_inode_cache and dentry_cache that doesn't return to normal for hours Message-Id: <20060804015221.dbcfa9d6.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <6d4bc9fc0608040053x4d7a9e14xe9de793cd0787736@mail.gmail.com> References: <6d4bc9fc0608030927t175f16c0kfef6a21cc521e368@mail.gmail.com> <1154661560.17180.31.camel@kleikamp.austin.ibm.com> <6d4bc9fc0608040053x4d7a9e14xe9de793cd0787736@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.4 (GTK+ 2.8.17; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1339 Lines: 38 On Fri, 4 Aug 2006 09:53:14 +0200 "Maarten Maathuis" wrote: > On 8/4/06, Dave Kleikamp wrote: > > On Thu, 2006-08-03 at 18:27 +0200, Maarten Maathuis wrote: > > > I have a kernel specific problem and this seemed like a suitable place to ask. > > > > > > I would like responces to be CC'ed to me if possible. > > > > > > I use a 2.6.17-ck1 kernel on an amd64 system. I have observed this > > > problem on other/older kernels. > > > > > > Whenever there is serious hard drive activity (such as doing "slocate > > > -u") ext3_inode_cache and dentry_cache grow to a combined 400-500 MiB. Increasing /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure should increase the inode/dentry reclaim rate. > > > > echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches > > > > This feature is relatively new. > > > > Thank you, i tried echo'ing a 1 into that and it had no effect iirc. 1 drops pagecache, 2 drops dentries and inodes. Pagecache pins inodes, so using 2 will drop less inodes than using 3. > Documentation on /proc/sys/vm seems pretty scarce. Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt - 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/