Bug 236786

Summary: dirty data is not flushed on a timely manner
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Reporter: Alex Lyashkov <shadow>
Component: kernelAssignee: Eric Sandeen <esandeen>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Martin Jenner <mjenner>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 4.4CC: esandeen, jbaron
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: RHBA-2007-0791 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-11-15 16:25:13 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 241784    
Attachments:
Description Flags
correct nr_unused accounting none

Description Alex Lyashkov 2007-04-17 17:12:59 UTC 
I enountered situation where dirty data is not flused on a timely manner       
(i.e. never) with RHEL4 kernel, I did some in vestigations and it turned out
that inodes_stat.nr_unused grow uncontrollably and this presents kupdated to
flush any dirty data because nr_to_write it calculates as:

nr_to_write = wbs.nr_dirty + wbs.nr_unstable + (inodes_stat.nr_inodes -
inodes_stat.nr_unused)
became negative.

I have found this problem is already fixed in vanilla kernel, here is the
pointer to patch:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=7f04c26d715a2467a49a2384268de8f70f787b51;hp=52303e8b5f8aa234865d40d76ea16b0ff4b27022

Can you please include this in your next kernel update?
Comment 2 RHEL Program Management 2007-05-09 04:47:18 UTC 
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.
Comment 4 Eric Sandeen 2007-05-23 16:33:04 UTC 
Just for my own notes, the change in question is already in the RHEL5 kernel.
Comment 5 Bryn M. Reeves 2007-05-24 16:11:49 UTC 
Created attachment 155360 [details]
correct nr_unused accounting
Comment 7 RHEL Program Management 2007-05-25 15:42:06 UTC 
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Kernel Team for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release, and has moved to bugzilla 
status POST.
Comment 9 Jason Baron 2007-06-08 18:14:08 UTC 
committed in stream U6 build 55.7. A test kernel with this patch is available
from http://people.redhat.com/~jbaron/rhel4/
Comment 12 errata-xmlrpc 2007-11-15 16:25:13 UTC 
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2007-0791.html