lists.openwall.net   lists  /  announce  owl-users  owl-dev  john-users  john-dev  passwdqc-users  yescrypt  popa3d-users  /  oss-security  kernel-hardening  musl  sabotage  tlsify  passwords  /  crypt-dev  xvendor  /  Bugtraq  Full-Disclosure  linux-kernel  linux-netdev  linux-ext4  linux-hardening  linux-cve-announce  PHC 
Open Source and information security mailing list archives
 
Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.
[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Date:	Fri, 06 May 2011 14:14:37 -0500
From:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...e.de>
To:	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>
Cc:	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...ell.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
	colin.king@...onical.com, Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-ext4 <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [BUG] fatal hang untarring 90GB file, possibly writeback
 related.

On Fri, 2011-05-06 at 16:44 +0100, Mel Gorman wrote:
> Colin and James: Did you happen to switch from SLAB to SLUB between
> 2.6.37 and 2.6.38? My own tests were against SLAB which might be why I
> didn't see the problem. Am restarting the tests with SLUB.

Aargh ... I'm an idiot.  I should have thought of SLUB immediately ...
it's been causing oopses since debian switched to it.

So I recompiled the 2.6.38.4 stable kernel with SLAB instead of SLUB and
the problem goes away ... at least from three untar runs on a loaded
box ... of course it could manifest a few ms after I send this email ...

There are material differences, as well: SLAB isn't taking my system
down to very low memory on the untar ... it's keeping about 0.5Gb listed
as free.  SLUB took that to under 100kb, so it could just be that SLAB
isn't wandering as close to the cliff edge?

James


--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Powered by blists - more mailing lists