Re: Does linux-2.2.15 have a serious disk problem? (was Re: End of first test cycle, new packages installed)
On 2000-05-25 at 09:34 +0200, Bas Zoetekouw wrote:
> Thus spake Colin Watson (cjw44@flatline.org.uk):
>
> > The later 2.3.99-pre* kernels have serious virtual memory management
> > problems on many machines; the visible effect is kswapd hogging massive
> > amounts of CPU time on even reasonable levels of I/O. I found them
> > unusable for any length of time on my machine. Looks like it should be
> > fixed soon, though ...
> >
> > I've heard some rumours that 2.2.15 *may* have similar problems, but I
> > can't offer much more than innuendo. I think we'd need more than rumour
> > to roll it back out of the test cycle.
>
> IIRC, this is indeed the case. It seems, however, that not everyone
> running those kernels is affected (depending on hardware and/or software
> configuration pesumably).
> See http://kt.linuxcare.com/kernel-traffic/latest.epl#5 for more info.
I would not get too worried about this. Anyone running around with a
gigabyte or more of RAM can probably be expected to know how to do a
custom kernel build. My impression is that this will affect only very
high-end systems using scatter-gather hardware (usually SCSI controllers)
and maybe some video cards with large apertures. If Linus comes out with
a 2.2.16 before Potato is released, then maybe it should be considered for
inclusion, but at this point I would rather have a few disk performance
problems on unusual hardware than the known security holes in 2.2.14.
-- Mike
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