Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753648AbZIUT5L (ORCPT ); Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:57:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752845AbZIUT5I (ORCPT ); Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:57:08 -0400 Received: from eagle.jhcloos.com ([207.210.242.212]:2586 "EHLO eagle.jhcloos.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751384AbZIUT5H (ORCPT ); Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:57:07 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 519 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:57:07 EDT From: James Cloos To: lkml Cc: Ulrich Lukas , Mike Galbraith Subject: Re: Poor desktop responsiveness with background I/O-operations In-Reply-To: <1253520364.25640.57.camel@marge.simson.net> (Mike Galbraith's message of "Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:06:04 +0200") References: <4AB59CBB.8090907@datenparkplatz.de> <20090920080728.73bfe2a1@infradead.org> <4AB5ECD0.7010903@datenparkplatz.de> <1253475521.9224.43.camel@marge.simson.net> <4AB6C73C.1030004@gmail.com> <1253507034.23414.90.camel@marge.simson.net> <4AB72FDC.5090403@datenparkplatz.de> <1253520364.25640.57.camel@marge.simson.net> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110011 (No Gnus v0.11) Emacs/23.1.50 (gnu/linux) Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAAABHNCSVQICAgIfAhkiAAAAI1J REFUOE+lU9ESgCAIg64P1y+ngUdxhl5H8wFbbM0OmUiEhKkCYaZThXCo6KE5sCbA1DDX3genvO4d eBQgEMaM5qy6uWk4SfBYfdu9jvBN9nSVDOKRtwb+I3epboOsOX5pZbJNsBJFvmQQ05YMfieIBnYX FK2N6dOawd97r/e8RjkTLzmMsiVgrAoEugtviCM3v2WzjgAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== Copyright: Copyright 2009 James Cloos OpenPGP: ED7DAEA6; url=http://jhcloos.com/public_key/0xED7DAEA6.asc OpenPGP-Fingerprint: E9E9 F828 61A4 6EA9 0F2B 63E7 997A 9F17 ED7D AEA6 Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:47:36 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1747 Lines: 35 FWIW, I did not notice any problems with the last kernel I had compiled in the -- IIRC -- 29-rc timeframe. Or maybe it was the 30-rc timeframe. I had that kernel up for soemthing like five weeks, on a busy, low-ram laptop, w/o and long pauses or other noticeable pain. For at least two years before that the best this laptop could manage before latency became horrific was a fortnight, and weekly reboots were desirable. Unfortunately, before I could send out a congratulatory note (I wanted to first confirm that the result remained) I pulled up and started see- ing even worse latency then ever. Turning ext4 barriers off helped avoid some of the new latency, and my current compile (master as of the 17th) is much better than .31 was. But long pauses still occur whenever paging and backgound i/o-bound tasks interact. There was a major regression in paging performance either .30 or .31 (see above). Interestingly, top(1) also shows less swap usage for the same usage patterns than with the older kernels. I don't know which is cause or which is effect. A git pull on a clone of Linus' tree is a great way to trigger the problem. As is using Gentoo's portage to install/upgrade anything. (Bad python; no alligator!?) (Yes, that is a burlesque of the no doughnut joke.) [1] Pythons which have invaded Florida have reportedly been witnessed eating alligators, according to a recent wire service article. -JimC -- James Cloos OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6 -- 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/