Ahhh, if only that were true :) It helps, no doubt about it, but under the
right load conditions I can still cause Couldn't get a free page... errors
even with somewhat huge values in the /proc/sys/vm/freepages file and with
64MB of RAM. It almost seems as though things aren't getting flushed
properly in the kernel. For instance, running several bonnies
simultaneously on several disks I can cause this error. The problem is, I'm
writing *way* too much info into the buffer cache for a 10 second delayed
write to suffice. Somewhere, the kernel needs to be smart enough to know
that if it is filling up buffer cache extremely quick, then it needs to
flush things faster. I think that currently, it occasionally misses this
situation so you get into a psuedo deadlock situation where you can't write
anymore since the buffer cache is full, and the write outs aren't occuring
like they are supposed to. I've actually had bonnie psuedo wedge on me
under 2.0.30 where the only way to get it going again was to switch over to
another vt and repeatedly run sync. That would flush things out and get the
kernel going again for a few seconds, then I would have to run sync again.
I know that can't be right.
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