Id this is not a hard freeze, but only an extreme slowdown, then it probably is one of the known issues with write-barrierss. Fortunately, the kernel folks have finally stopped twiddeling their thumbs and have started to do something about it. The problem arises when writing a lot of data to a slower device (among other things). The slowdown by the encryption can be enough to trigger the issue. Also, doing something like a "cat /dev/zero > ttt" tyically causes these freezes that can take minutes or longer. 2.6.36 is alrady significantly improved, but contains only part of the intended changes. 2.6.37 is expected to be still better. I would recomend to try with 2.6.36 for the moment. Arno On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 08:17:48AM -0700, Nicolas Bock wrote: > Hello list, > > I am using 2 primary FAT partitions for swap that I encrypt with cryptsetup > on boot with a random password from /dev/urandom. I noticed that once memory > pressure is high enough for the pager to start swapping, the system freezes. > It seems as if it's only the disk that freezes however, when I am logged > into a virtual console I can still use the keyboard to switch between > different consoles and the magic sysreq keys are working. I can ping the > machine but that's about it. Anything that seems to involve disk access like > logging in, Ctrl-C'ing the high memory job, switching to graphical console, > etc, does not work. I have tried to increase kernel logging with 'dmesg -n8' > but to no avail. I do not see any error messages when this happens. I am > using a vanilla kernel, version 2.6.34.5. Any pointers as to what could > this be caused by or how I could track this down are greatly appreciated. > > nick > _______________________________________________ > dm-crypt mailing list > dm-crypt@xxxxxxxx > http://www.saout.de/mailman/listinfo/dm-crypt -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno@xxxxxxxxxxx GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans If it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." -- Bruce Schneier _______________________________________________ dm-crypt mailing list dm-crypt@xxxxxxxx http://www.saout.de/mailman/listinfo/dm-crypt
