"tail /dev/zero" hangs 2.4.19-pre10aa2 but not -pre10 and -pre10ac2

Hello,

tail /dev/zero (ran as a normal user) hangs 2.4.19-pre10aa2 but not -pre10 and -pre10ac2.

In case of -pre10aa2:

The vmstat output just before it started killing processes, and later hang (ie, the vmstat itself hang):
procs memory swap io system
cpu

 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  
sy  id
 0  0  0      0  92428   5420  14752   0   0   331   118  146   116  16  
13  71
 0  0  0      0  92276   5568  14752   0   0     0    53  109     6   0   

0 100
0 0 0 0 91264 5652 14752 0 0 0 23 114 19 1
0 99
0 0 0 0 90760 5864 14808 0 0 8 58 113 16 0
1 99

 2  1  1  40836   1528   1512   5016  78 5789    83  5802  241   250  19  
12  69
 1  0  1 101168   1912   1512   5012  95 7930    95  7935  245   267  10  
13  77
 2  0  2 152560   1500   1512   5012  62 8098    62  8098  243   200  10  
21  70

With greater difficulty I was able to login (it killed the telnet session many times, at various stages).

Some sample messages from dmesg:
__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)
VM: killing process tail
__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)

Multiply the "__alloc_pages" error message by 100 times or so.

And,
VM: killing process smbd

In the same way it killed run-crons, login, in.telnetd, tcpd, inetd and X.

Though it killed the root cause - "tail" command, commands like ps/top/reboot etc hang, vmstat got killed initially and hung later, su got killed, sync works fine. I am unable to switch between virtual terminals at the console using ctrl alt F1/F2.

In case of -pre10 and -pre10ac2:
It thrashes initially for about 10 secs (approx) and then everything is back to normal. There is a single line of "Out of Memory: killed process 403 (tail)" (of course the process id of tail is different between -pre10 and -pre10ac2). And the system comes back to normal state.

This is a:
Pentium - II @ 333 MHz
128 MB RAM,
150 MB swap,
gcc-2.95.2,
suse 7.1

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Thanks
Hari
[email protected]