From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050328 Fedora/1.7.6-1.2.5 Description of problem: large processes run much slower, and are even, sometimes, killed even though there is lots of spare memory. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): any kernel -above- 2.6.9-1.667 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. boot 2.6.10-1.770_FC3 (or 2.6.11) 2. run as non-root user: dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M | perl -e '@f=<>' 3. wait - system might slow down for a few seconds 4. note the number of records written by dd Actual Results: in 2.6.10/11 results: $ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M | perl -e '@f=<>' Out of memory! 1825+0 records in 1825+0 records out $ Expected Results: in 2.6.9 results: $ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M | perl -e '@f=<>' Out of memory! 3649+0 records in 3648+0 records out $ Additional info: machine is a P4 has 4Gb of real ram, plus 4Gb of swap.
An update has been released for Fedora Core 3 (kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3) which may contain a fix for your problem. Please update to this new kernel, and report whether or not it fixes your problem. If you have updated to Fedora Core 4 since this bug was opened, and the problem still occurs with the latest updates for that release, please change the version field of this bug to 'fc4'. Thank you.
I've tried fc3 and fc4 with latest kernels - the problem persists :-( There is a better explanation and even a possible fix here: http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/4eee0eee2ac7e7b0/c6b24f7fbed3b9cc Can that be incorporated? thanks jake
Mass update to all FC4 bugs: An update has been released (2.6.13-1.1526_FC4) which rebases to a new upstream kernel (2.6.13.2). As there were ~3500 changes upstream between this and the previous kernel, it's possible your bug has been fixed already. Please retest with this update, and update this bug if necessary. Thanks.
2.6.14-1.1637_FC4 has been released as an update for FC4. Please retest with this update, as a large amount of code has been changed in this release, which may have fixed your problem. Thank you.
This is a mass-update to all currently open kernel bugs. A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.15-1.1830_FC4) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO_REPORTER state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. Thank you.
Closing per previous comment.