Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 16 Jul 1997 18:30:16 +0200 | From | Florian La Roche <> | Subject | Re: 2.0.31 : please! |
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> On a 486 machine with 8 meg of memory (a very adequate piece of hardware > in the past) with the 2.0.30 kernel, the machine can be caused to lock up > tight from the "can't get free page" error if you try to create a file > system on an 850 meg partition (or larger).
I reported such a hanging system to Linus at the time of 1.3.2x kernels. Linus added the extra GFP_NFS, so that NFS gets some extra pages of memory. Before that, I could reproduce this bug with an NFS-installation of a 16 MB machine. (Oh, well, I often just started an extra shell on another tty and typed "exit", if the kernel hung. That got the system going again. :-) (The situation is similar, as normally no other program releases memory at installation time or at bootup/fsck-time.)
Seems like the problem is now well(??) understood, though it needs some more testing and fine-tuning for a 2.0.31. Unlike many other bugs, changing these things seems to be more complex than most people can think of. Some changes can also not be proofed by reading the new C source, but must be tested on lots of different machines. For me, that is nearly the same as some fixes for esoteric TCP-problems that still get fixed by Dave or Eric Schenk.
Hope you still enjoy the kernel and don't through it away, :-) linux-kernel is getting high-volumne again, sorry for posting,
Florian La Roche
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