[ale] VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd

[John Wells]

My post earlier about IMAP/Apache/Squirrel mail running extremely long
turned out to have nothing to do with the machine's speed.  When I returned
home tonight, I checked the machine and found numerous "VM:
do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd".  I hit a key a few times and got to
a prompt, but everything was moving *extremely* slow.

I looked at how many httpd processes were running and there were 29!  A bit
more than I expected.  I "apachectl stop"ped and the screen was filled with
"VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for httpd", and I couldn't regain control
of the machine...had to do a hard reboot.

What might be causing this?  I'm running kernel 2.2.17 and everything I've
found on the net regarding similar messages indicate a problem with kernel
2.2.16 that was supposedly fixed in 2.2.17.  I'm betting that the kernel is
unable to free the memory used by various processes and that's why my system
was dragging so badly.  I plan on recompiling a newer kernel, but could
someone provide some insight into what exactly might be happening?

Thanks!

John


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