long hangs when deleting large directories (3.0-rc3)

[Markus Trippelsdorf]

On 2011.06.18 at 16:37 +0200, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> On 2011.06.18 at 10:24 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 04:19:50PM +0200, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> > > Running the latest git kernel (3.0-rc3) my machine hangs for long
> > > periods (1-2 sec) whenever I delete a large directory recursively on my
> > > xfs partition. During the hang I cannot move the mouse pointer or use
> > > the keyboard (but the music keeps playing without stuttering). A quick
> > > way to reproduce is to "rm -fr" a kernel tree. 
> > 
> > Does this also happen when using the deadline I/O schedule, that is
> > after a:
> > 
> > echo "deadline" > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
> 
> Yes.

I've tested this a little further. The behavior is independent of the
kernel version used (tested back to 2.6.37). My SSD is also fine and a
freshly created xfs partition shows no problems, too.
Please note that the affected partition is used very heavily here
(several git trees, daily backups of / and the Gentoo build-dir reside
there).
So it appears that the observed "hangs" are the result of a strongly
aged file-system. 

-- 
Markus