Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756144AbXIUIIl (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:08:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754488AbXIUII1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:08:27 -0400 Received: from canadatux.org ([85.214.62.144]:42823 "EHLO zoidberg.canadatux.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754480AbXIUIIZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:08:25 -0400 Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:08:08 +0200 From: Matthias Hensler To: Andrew Morton Cc: Chuck Ebbert , linux-kernel , Thomas Gleixner , richard kennedy , Peter Zijlstra Subject: Re: Processes spinning forever, apparently in lock_timer_base()? Message-ID: <20070921080808.GA28849@kobayashi-maru.wspse.de> Reply-To: Matthias Hensler References: <46B10BB7.60900@redhat.com> <20070803113407.0b04d44e.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070804084426.GA20464@kobayashi-maru.wspse.de> <20070809095943.GA7763@kobayashi-maru.wspse.de> <20070809095534.25ae1c42.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <46F2E103.8000907@redhat.com> <20070920142927.d87ab5af.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <46F2EE76.4000203@redhat.com> <20070920153654.b9e90616.akpm@linux-foundation.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="fUYQa+Pmc3FrFX/N" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070920153654.b9e90616.akpm@linux-foundation.org> Organization: WSPse (http://www.wspse.de/) X-Gummibears: Bouncing here and there and everywhere X-Face: &Tv]9SsNpb/$w8\G-O%>W02aApFW^P>[x+Upv9xQB!2;iD9Y1-Lz'qlc{+lL2Y>J(u76 Jk,cJ@$tP2-M%y?^'jn2J]3C'ss_~"u?kA^X&{]h?O?@*VwgSGob73I9r}&S%ktup0k2 !neScg3'HO}PU#Ac>jwNL|P@f|f*sz*cP'hi)/a=6.rc-P1vXa rjVXlzClmNfcSy/$4tQz User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2314 Lines: 63 --fUYQa+Pmc3FrFX/N Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 03:36:54PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > That's all a bit crappy if the wrong races happen and some other task > is somehow exceeding the dirty limits each time this task polls them. > Seems unlikely that such a condition would persist forever. How exactly do you define forever? It looks to me, that this condition never resolves on its own, at least not in a window of several hours (the system used to get stuck around 3am and was normally rebooted between 7am and 8am, so at least hours are not enough to have the problem resolve on its own). > So the question is, why do we have large amounts of dirty pages for > one disk which appear to be sitting there not getting written? Unfortunately I have no idea. The full stacktrace for all processes was attached to the original bugreport, maybe that can give a clue to that. > Do we know if there's any writeout at all happening when the system is > in this state? Not sure about that. The system is responsible on a still open SSH session, allowing several tasks still to be executed. However, that SSH session gets stuck very fast if the wrong commands are executed. New logins are not possible (Connection is akzepted but resulting in a timeout 60 seconds later, so most likely /bin/login is not able to log into wtmp). =46rom all that I suspect that there is no more write activity on that system, but cannot say for sure. > Did anyone try running /bin/sync when the system is in this state? I did not, no. Regards, Matthias --fUYQa+Pmc3FrFX/N Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) iQCVAwUBRvN74oagCBsispUdAQIpKwP/WdZAUgPDbPKcRe72BcsQTVlOuQOZWezJ 7hSs41O23jmSFsXxrOUBBqVfOacQcSCv3JuI0jFLX1D8wiQaLIlzsQjDAGhqWGU1 Gm/ob1OPfXM7FEfo8/EVzOFLKvT8H4KwkQd1UvuMM2VRG8hdhabc+1j2shhaza/X VYQDbXYsdOQ= =mqgu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --fUYQa+Pmc3FrFX/N-- - 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/