Bug#635371: linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64: screen freezes when doing make -j12

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

severity 635371 wishlist
tags 635371 + upstream moreinfo
quit

Hi Arnaud,

Arnaud Gelas wrote:

> When compiling some libraries with gcc with all possible threads, the screen
> freezed and even killing  processes is difficult

How much memory was used?  Did it go into swap?  Is swap on a slow
disk?  Is this behavior different from previous versions of the
kernel?  Other notable details?

The memory management subsystem or perhaps the I/O scheduler (?) is
known to not cope very well with low-memory situations when memory
being actively used needs to be reclaimed by swapping things out.  In
an ideal world, we would want the system to remain responsive enough
to kill something, but in practice it is hard to figure out how to do
that and figure out what to keep in memory.

If some details inspire a method of chiseling away at the problem, I
can help direct you to an appropriate person upstream to discuss it
and point out patches to test.  Otherwise, I will probably close the
bug, since it would not be clear how to use this knowledge to improve
the kernel.

Thanks for reporting.

Regards,
Jonathan