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SubjectRe: Linux responsiveness under heavy load
In <38C6E35C.3A2FE466@timpanogas.com> Jeff V. Merkey (jmerkey@timpanogas.com) wrote:

> All,

> FYI. Earlier versions of Windows NT had this same problem (and it still
> does). The way they got around it was to "cheat" by cranking up the
> priority of the console an Windows GUI subsystem anytime someone hit a
> key or moved the mouse. In fact, an NT server is still heavily loaded,
> but by making the display look and feel "snappy", it presents the
> illusion that the server has great responsiveness under heavy load.
> This stuff in NT is all hard coded (Since their GUI is tightly
> integrated with the OS), and if Linux wanted to do the same, the X
> Server and bash would probably be the places to do this .....

Oh, do not talk about NT here. When I start dMail in NT (see headers of my
mail :-) then suddenly I feel that I just switched from PentiumII-350 to
486DX66 (if not 386DX33 :-). dMail is simple DOS program and it does not
do anything criminal (for DOS program that is): it just sits in tight loop
to show current time in statu bar. At lest in Linux I do not feel background
dMail even if I see dosemu eating almost 100% of cpu ...

P.S. I'm NOT talking about dMail itself -- it works great. Just MS Office
need few seconds to open up menu when there are idle dMail in the background.
And when I press letter I see it inserted in typed text after visible delay...

> Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Nicolas MONNET wrote:
>>
>> >I've noticed that under heavy loads, and actually, not so heavy loads,
>> >Linux's responsiveness is effectively very poor.
>>
>> Which kernel version are you using?
>>
>> >[..] The
>> >system isn't even swapping, [..]
>>
>> Supposing you are using 2.2.x if it wasn't VM related it's probably the
>> elevator starvation thing. Could you try again with 2.2.14aa10 (it
>> includes elevator-starvation-6.gz):
>>
>> ftp://ftp.*.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.2/2.2.14aa10.gz
>>
>> For reference the elevator-starvation-6.gz patch alone is here:
>>
>> ftp://ftp.*.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.2/2.2.14aa10/elevator-starvation-6.gz
>>
>> >It's not like there's a bunch of runaway processe: at most, 5 processes
>> >are running.
>>
>> To be sure about what's going on could you provide me a `vmstat 1` log
>> of before/during/after the performance drop?
>>
>> Andrea
>>




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