Re: Linux 2.1.103 very lazy on flushing dirty buffers.

Wolfram Gloger (wmglo@dent.med.uni-muenchen.de)
27 May 1998 13:43:43 -0000

> "David S. Miller" <davem@dm.cobaltmicro.com> writes:
>
> > This should never happen if update/bdflush is running in userspace,
> > which guarentees a dirty buffer flush ever minute or so.
>
> bdflush runs. I think the key word is "should" - something in 2.1 seems
> to mess up the syncs.

A very old `update/bdflush' binary may be the problem -- if I remember
right it was only required for some 1.x kernels which lacked kernel
threads. Now for some reason the bdflush system call seems to no
longer work in the same way, so an old `update/bdflush' daemon does no
longer sync regularly -- it may get stuck in the bdflush system call.

I discovered this on a production 2.0 system recently, which
apparently ran for a month without a sync() called by update.
Recompiling `updated' from current Debian sources (either it no longer
includes any bdflush syscall, or I removed it explicitly, can't
remember) solved the `problem'.

Regards,
Wolfram.

-- 
`Surf the sea, not double-u three...'
wmglo@dent.med.uni-muenchen.de


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