linux-kernel - kswapd continuously active

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Date:	Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:52:10 +0100 (CET)
From:	Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...ozas.de>
To:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
cc:	jens.axboe@...cle.com
Subject: kswapd continuously active

Hi,


with 2.6.32.2 on sparc64 I am seeing that there is a sync(1) process 
busy in D state, with the following trace:

sync          D 000000000079299c  7552  4851      1 0x208061101000004
Call Trace:
 [000000000053ca58] bdi_sched_wait+0xc/0x1c
 [000000000079299c] __wait_on_bit+0x58/0xb8
 [0000000000792a5c] out_of_line_wait_on_bit+0x60/0x74
 [000000000053ca3c] bdi_sync_writeback+0x6c/0x7c
 [000000000053ca78] sync_inodes_sb+0x10/0xfc
 [0000000000540dd0] __sync_filesystem+0x50/0x88
 [0000000000540ec8] sync_filesystems+0xc0/0x124
 [0000000000540f80] sys_sync+0x1c/0x48
 [0000000000406294] linux_sparc_syscall+0x34/0x44

kswapd is also active all the time, writing something to disk - LED is 
blinking, and that's been going on for over half an hour despite the box 
being not busy. How do I see what kswapd is still flushing to disk? Even 
if all RAM (8 GB) was filled with dirty data, syncing it out would not 
take that long - that is to say, the sync process should have long 
exited.
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