Messages in this thread | | | From | "Tony Gale" <> | Date | Thu, 24 Oct 1996 09:45:20 +0000 | Subject | syslog spiral death |
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Hi all,
Have been seeing a problem with a system we have that has quite a heavy load - lots of short lived processes (upto 3 per second which can run for a few sconds to a few minutes).
The problem is, that each process adds logs to syslog (for accounting). Everything usually runs fine, but it appears that when the syslog file gets large (say 8G) that syslog starts using more of the CPU, which creates a backlog in the processes, which results in a higher load, which means more syslog acitivity etc.
When the syslog file is small, the system has no problems recovering from bursts of high load (loadavg of over 50). But when the syslog file is large, things just compound, and the loadavg goes through the ceiling (over 400) and things are backed up until the system cannot create anymore processes.
The processes are basically transfering small files across the network.
Anyone know what causes this behaviour? Inefficiency in the filesystem implementation (ext2) for large files?
Thanks
Tony
-- Tony Gale gale@minotaur.dra.hmg.gb
| All opinions expressed are my own |
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