On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Mel Gorman wrote: > > The maximum time for which the livelock can exists is the vm stat > > interval. By default the counters are brought up to date at least once per > > second or if a certain delta was violated. Drifts are controlled by the > > delta configuration. > > > > While there is a maximum time (2 seconds I think) the drift can exist > in, a machine under enough pressure can make a mess of the watermarks > during that time. If it wasn't the case, these livelocks with 0 pages > free wouldn't be happening. So because we go way beyond the watermarks we reach a state in which a livelock exists that does not go away when the counters are finally updated? -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>