RHEL5: System unresponsive under low memory conditions and default setting of max_reclaims_in_progress

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • System becomes unresponsive under low memory conditions with the following stack traces:

    #3 [ffff810a6c823990] .text.lock.spinlock at ffffffff80064ccf (via _spin_lock_irq)
#4 [ffff810a6c823990] shrink_inactive_list at ffffffff800c7933
#5 [ffff810a6c823b80] shrink_zone at ffffffff80012d02
#6 [ffff810a6c823bc0] try_to_free_pages at ffffffff800c80ac
#7 [ffff810a6c823c40] __alloc_pages at ffffffff8000f271
  • What is the vm.max_reclaims_in_progress parameter?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  • default value (0) for vm.max_reclaims_in_progress
  • workload which causes low memory conditions

Subscriber exclusive content

A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase of over 48,000 articles and solutions.

Current Customers and Partners

Log in for full access

Log In

New to Red Hat?

Learn more about Red Hat subscriptions

Close

Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.