Re: pre 2.0.31: try_to_free_page

Trevor Johnson (trevor@jpj.net)
Thu, 8 May 1997 18:54:14 +0000 (Local time zone must be set--see zic manual pagetrevor@jpj.net


> > I got exactly that message as well, while copying files from one IDE drive
> > to another. I have 64 MB RAM and no swap space activated.
>
> It seems that does not prevent kswapd from being activated.

I deleted the

kernel_thread(kswapd, NULL, 0);

from init/main.c. After rebooting, I started X11 and many X programs,
used cp to copy a large tar file from one IDE hard drive to another, had
tar test another large tar file, then ran (from an account on which limits
weren't properly set) a fork bomb which allocates memory, all at the same
time. Right after starting the fork bomb, I got three more of the
try_to_free_page messages:

May 8 10:40:22 topside kernel: try_to_free_page: state(0) stop(0) i(-1)
sleep instead of fail
May 8 10:40:23 topside kernel: try_to_free_page: state(0) stop(0) i(-1)
sleep instead of fail
May 8 10:40:28 topside kernel: try_to_free_page: state(0) stop(9) i(-2)
sleep instead of fail
May 8 10:40:56 topside kernel: Unable to load interpreter
May 8 10:41:27 topside last message repeated 11 times
___
Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net>