We have found a potential memory leak in the current XFS CVS build. (It
occurs at least a few kernels back at least too.) The following
procedure seems to produce a total system freeze pretty reliably:
1. Use the latest XFS linux kernel. (I have seen it in 2.4.15-pre3 & it
was just confirmed in the latest CVS also)
2. Boot the machine in a low memory state; "mem=64M" in lilo boot for
example.
3. Run Andrew Tridgell's (of the SAMBA guys) utility "dbench" on an XFS
partition. (The problem does not manifest on an ext2 partition using the
kernels)
4. "# ./dbench 30"
(yup... Really stress it with 30 clients.)
Make sure you do this on an XFS partition that you are prepared to junk
:->
5. Wait a while until your computer becomes completely unresponsive.
Tridge & I have both confirmed this. He's currently trying to figure out
where the bug is using kdbg. (I'd be doing it too if my laptop hadn't
run out of juice)
More later...
John M. Trostel
jtrostel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mail from my Visor - cool !
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