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Re: do_try_to_free_pages failed



Quoting "J.H.M. Dassen (Ray)" <jhm@cistron.nl>:

> On Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 16:40:28 -0400, Gene Grimm wrote:
> > I keep receiving the following error messages on my server console and
> in
> > the log files. Can anyone direct me to where on my system I need to
> check
> > to fix these problems and what package(s) are related?
> > 
> > kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for XF86_S3...
> 
> Either you are running a kernel that has problems in virtual memory
> management (quite a few recent ones still have some problems in this
> area),
> or your system does not have enough main memory and/or swap space.

Actually, it is not just the recent ones... I have seen this behavior in 2.2.x 
kernels. A read of the kernel developers list shows that the 2.2.x series 
kernel had problems in the VM area... Alan Cox said towards the beginning of 
the 2.4 series that the best VM handler they ever had was in the 2.0.x series 
kernels, and suggested going back to it as a possiblity. There are hopes that 
the 2.4 series will do VM better, but end user comments suggest that there are 
still problems to be worked out.

I have seen VM race conditions on a 2.2.18 machine with heaps of spare swap 
grind the machine to a halt, requiring a hard reset. Throwing more swap at it 
doesn't help, but adding more RAM does.

--
ABO: finger abo@minkirri.apana.org.au for more information.



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