On Sun, 2011-12-18 at 01:37 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Saturday 17 December 2011 19:41:38 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > > This looks like a regression. Under F15 when I wrote large files to a > > pendrive, the system would become a little sluggish. Now it essentially > > freezes until the write terminates. What I mean is that the UI is almost > > completely unresponsive; even clicking between two terminal windows is > > so slow that you can see the window contents refresh, followed several > > seconds later by the frame. > > > > Fully updated F16 with KDE, Intel Core 2 Dual, 4GB RAM, Intel onboard > > graphics. The pendrive is an 8GB Patriot Xporter (a year or two old) > > under USB-2 with no intervening hub. > > Oh yes, this is one of my favourities... :-D > > There's a very good article at LWN discussing precisely this issue: > > http://lwn.net/Articles/467328/ > > You wouldn't believe how complicated these things can get... ;-) One would > naively think "yes, the USB drive is slow, but that shouldn't stop the rest of > the system from running smoothly". However, when you put into the mix the > hugemem page allocation, memory fragmentation, contradictory points of view on > how the kernel should be optimized, etc., it seems that it is quite natural > that your typical fast 3GHz system with 4GB of RAM grinds to a complete halt > during a simple write-to-USB-drive operation... :-D That might be it I guess, but I'm not totally convinced. I updated F15->F16 only 5 days ago, and previous to the switchover had no problems of this sort, using the latest kernel for F15. It's hard to believe the kernel switch from F15 to F16 can have made such a huge difference. For the record, I went from: kernel-2.6.41.1-1.fc15.x86_64 to: kernel-3.1.5-1.fc16.x86_64 But as we know, the version bump from 2 to 3 is meaningless in itself. poc -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
