From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 28 07:54:21 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8033E16A41F for ; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:54:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from julian@elischer.org) Received: from postoffice.vicor-nb.com (postoffice.vicor.com [69.26.56.52]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 355C443D49 for ; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:54:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from julian@elischer.org) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by postoffice.vicor-nb.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D76CB4CE98B; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:54:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postoffice.vicor-nb.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (postoffice.vicor-nb.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 15303-01; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:54:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [208.206.78.97] (julian.vicor-nb.com [208.206.78.97]) by postoffice.vicor-nb.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3BBA54CE995; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:54:20 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <42E88F2B.5000108@elischer.org> Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:54:19 -0700 From: Julian Elischer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050629 X-Accept-Language: en, hu MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Julian Elischer References: <42E88135.30603@elischer.org> In-Reply-To: <42E88135.30603@elischer.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at postoffice.vicor.com Cc: FreeBSD Current Subject: Re: Apparent strange disk behaviour in 6.0 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:54:21 -0000 Julian Elischer wrote: > > > I've been playing around with some raid arrays. > I've notived some odd things. > > [stuff] Ok I've done some researching.. it APPEARS that teh system is swapping out running programs in order to store more write data! experiment: boot to single user mode. type: mount {big partition} dd if=/dev/zero bs=128K of=/$bigpartition}/bigfile count=1000000 notice that after a short while your dd is killed because the system is out of swapspace. (it doesn't have any) Why the F*ck does it need swapspace.? there are exactly 2 proceses running in userspace and one of them s in wait4(). dd shows a resident size of about 170KB leaving about a GIGABYTE of unused RAM. The system should make dd wait rather than trying to swap its pages out.. if you then do swapon (your swap device) and repeat teh command in the background, vmstat 1 will show you pages being faulted in and out... no WONDER IO goes to hell in a handbasket.. Outgoing IO should never be able to force running programs out! It should start re-using old pages from the same file! 4.11 gives a consinstent 65MB/sec with this array, for as long as I run it.. 6.0 gives me 65MB for 15 seconds and then it drops to 20MB/sec and then 10MB/sec and the swap disk bursts into life. the array goes from all the lights solidly on, to bursts of activity with large gaps in between them.