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

[Arnaud Gelas <arnaud_gelas@hms.harvard.edu>]

Hi Jonathan,

On 07/25/2011 04:44 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> 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?
$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12041      11723        317          0        368       7170
-/+ buffers/cache:       4184       7856
Swap:        19322        301      19021

The swap is located a recent and decent disk.

I have just switched from another distribution (Fedora) where I never 
had this problem before.
So I can't tell about previous kernel on debian.

(Note: it may have been fixed in more recent version of the kernel?)

> 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.
I can test patches if anyone could see a solution.
> Thanks for reporting.
>
> Regards,
> Jonathan

Thanks,
Arnaud