Bug 59748

Description of Problem:
We ran into performance problems running Oracle on the Red Hat 2.4.9 kernel (-13
but -21 has the same problem). We have managed to isolate the issue to a very
small test program that can reproduce the problem. In a nutshell, once the
buffer/page cache is filled (e.g. use dd to copy a file larger than memory), I/O
to shm memory from a raw partition always incurs a swap I/O for the shm page. If
the memory is obtained via malloc instead, this problem does not occur.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Red Hat Linux 7.2, kernel 2.4.9-13 or -21. I'm sure that the 2.4.9-7 kernel has
similar issues since they all use the 2.4.9-ac10 patch.

How Reproducible:
100%. While there is free memory performance is identical. Once there is not,
shm performance tanks.

Steps to Reproduce:
I have a small test program that reproduces the problem.
1. Attach a raw partition.
2. Use dd to copy a file larger than memory to pollute/fill the page/buffer
cache. Wait for the buffers to be flushed and the system to quiesce.
3. Run the program that performs random reads from the raw partition to memory
that is either malloced or shm memory. Even though the program was changed to do
I/O to the same page every time, the performance with shm is 1/2 or worse that
of the performance with malloc

Actual Results:
The I/O rate to the shm memory is 1/2 that of the malloced memory. If the raw
partition is on a high-speed low latency drive (in our case an Imperial
Technology Megaram FC ramdisk), the performance drops to 1/7 !

Expected Results:
Performance should be the same regardless of the memory being obtained via SysV
shm or malloc. This is the case with the Linus 2.4.9 kernel.org kernel.

Additional Information:
I will add the program as an attachment.