2.4.0-ac9 works, but slower and swappier

I've been running 2.4.0-ac9 for a day and a half now.

I have pretty low-end hardware (Pentium 1/ 100MHz, 16Mb RAM, 17Mb swap) and it really seems to bog down with anything
heavy in memory. Netscape seems to really drag, and any
Java applets I encounter positively crawl -- you can see the individual widgets being drawn.

My previous kernel was 240-ac4, and it was fine.

Oh, one other thing...cat /proc/filesystems shows:

nodev   sockfs
nodev   swapfs
nodev   shm
nodev   pipefs
nodev   proc

ext2
nodev devpts

I thought swapfs _replaces_ shm? I mention this because
my startup scripts mount'ed shm the way it always does. I figured it'd fail because shm wouldnt be there. I've since disabled that.

So, mount swapfs to /dev/shm, and leave the shm filesystem
unmounted? Go back to the way it was before (mounting to
/var/shm) ??

W/ swapfs (only) mounted, MITSHM apps like MpegTV, Virtual Gameboy, Xanim, etc. seem to work okay.

--
Mark Orr
[email protected]

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Could you please try this patch:

http://bazar.conectiva.com.br/~marcelo/patches/v2.4/2.4.1pre3/try_to_free_pages-3.patch

and report results?

Thanks

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Yeah, I just applied the patch and recompiled. Yes, it fixed it, pretty decisively too.

P100/16Mb RAM/17Mb swap -- run Netscape 3.04, and start some large Java applet -- like a Java-based game or Yahoo Chat or some such.

...on 240-ac4, it works okay. On 240-ac9, the disk grinds away, and it's
so slow you can see individual widgets being drawn.

With this patch, it's pretty much back to the way it was in -ac4, maybe a little better.

thanx.

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