Re: [Nolug] Spam and Virus Protection

On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 01:05, -ray wrote:
> On 9 Jul 2003, Ron Johnson wrote:
>
> > > More interesting, the most unreliable piece in our mail system has been
> > > the Linux kernel.
> >
> > How so?
>
> Lots of VM (virtual memory) problems, kswapd using too much CPU and not
> freeing file cache memory properly. It's a problem on a system with lots
> of file activity (ie mailserver). It would run for a few days then start
> thrashing and crap out. There are still some big VM problems in 2.4 with
> more than 4gb memory.
>
> Redhat's enterprise kernel (based on 2.4.9) never did work. I tried stock
> 2.4.20, 2.4.21-pre's, -ac series, -aa series, and tried many patches from
> people on the kernel list. Finally settled on compiling the Redhat 9
> kernel, which uses a modified rmap VM. It is pretty stable. I think the
> rmap VM is what's in 2.5 and going into 2.6. Shortly after that after
> many months of complaints and errata releases that didn't fix anything,
> redhat released a kernel that fixed most of the VM problems. I'm running
> it on the 2nd mailserver, and it appears pretty stable also.
>
> In the process, learned more about the kernel VM than i probably wanted to
> know. :)

So the stock RH9 is most stable in a high-RAM, high-usage environment,
according to what you've seen?

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr.     Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net          |
| Jefferson, LA  USA   http://members.cox.net/ron.l.johnson |
|                                                           |
| "Adventure is a sign of incompetence"                     |
|    Stephanson, great polar explorer                       |
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