Hello! I'm not sure what triggers this off, but at certain times, we see this on shared hosting servers with storage over NFSv3: top - 13:24:35 up 8 days, 6:47, 2 users, load average: 69.23, 77.59, 85.53 Tasks: 1318 total, 11 running, 1303 sleeping, 0 stopped, 4 zombie Cpu(s): 2.5%us, 96.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.9%si, 0.0%st Mem: 4055836k total, 3746576k used, 309260k free, 39348k buffers Swap: 979960k total, 104868k used, 875092k free, 1558432k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 5558 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 38 0.0 22:30.23 flush-0:58 5683 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 38 0.0 53:06.24 flush-0:76 13076 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 38 0.0 30:03.96 flush-0:62 13265 mysql 20 0 1763m 128m 5632 S 38 3.3 8:21.47 mysqld 25419 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 38 0.0 12:17.28 flush-0:38 5783 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 32 0.0 43:32.78 flush-0:78 12725 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 32 0.0 29:45.53 flush-0:72 5676 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 32 0.0 41:18.64 flush-0:82 24034 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 32 0.0 30:26.86 flush-0:32 32192 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 32 0.0 24:36.93 flush-0:81 8465 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 31 0.0 19:26.43 flush-0:83 29379 root 20 0 30228 3076 1560 R 2 0.1 0:00.25 top # cat /proc/5676/stack [<ffffffff81203fed>] nfs_writepages+0xed/0x160 [<ffffffff8136b320>] _atomic_dec_and_lock+0x50/0x70 [<ffffffff8111ac3c>] iput+0x2c/0x2a0 [<ffffffff8112636e>] writeback_sb_inodes+0xce/0x150 [<ffffffff81126d1c>] writeback_inodes_wb+0xcc/0x140 [<ffffffff811270bb>] wb_writeback+0x32b/0x370 [<ffffffff811271d4>] wb_do_writeback+0xd4/0x1e0 [<ffffffff811273bb>] bdi_writeback_thread+0xdb/0x240 [<ffffffff81071ae6>] kthread+0x96/0xb0 [<ffffffff8100bd24>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 [<ffffffffffffffff>] 0xffffffffffffffff PerfTop: 3894 irqs/sec kernel:99.5% exact: 0.0% [1000Hz cycles], (all, 4 CPUs) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- samples pcnt function DSO _______ _____ _______________________________ _________________ 25466.00 81.1% _raw_spin_lock [kernel.kallsyms] 968.00 3.1% nfs_writepages [kernel.kallsyms] 704.00 2.2% writeback_sb_inodes [kernel.kallsyms] 671.00 2.1% writeback_single_inode [kernel.kallsyms] 636.00 2.0% queue_io [kernel.kallsyms] 393.00 1.3% nfs_write_inode [kernel.kallsyms] 368.00 1.2% __iget [kernel.kallsyms] 360.00 1.1% iput [kernel.kallsyms] 334.00 1.1% bit_waitqueue [kernel.kallsyms] 293.00 0.9% do_writepages [kernel.kallsyms] 206.00 0.7% redirty_tail [kernel.kallsyms] 194.00 0.6% __mark_inode_dirty [kernel.kallsyms] 135.00 0.4% _atomic_dec_and_lock [kernel.kallsyms] 119.00 0.4% write_cache_pages [kernel.kallsyms] 65.00 0.2% __wake_up_bit [kernel.kallsyms] 62.00 0.2% is_bad_inode [kernel.kallsyms] 41.00 0.1% find_get_pages_tag [kernel.kallsyms] 37.00 0.1% radix_tree_gang_lookup_tag_slot [kernel.kallsyms] 29.00 0.1% wake_up_bit [kernel.kallsyms] 17.00 0.1% thread_group_cputime [kernel.kallsyms] 16.00 0.1% pagevec_lookup_tag [kernel.kallsyms] 16.00 0.1% radix_tree_tagged [kernel.kallsyms] 16.00 0.1% _cond_resched [kernel.kallsyms] 14.00 0.0% ktime_get [kernel.kallsyms] 11.00 0.0% mapping_tagged [kernel.kallsyms] 9.00 0.0% nfs_pageio_init [kernel.kallsyms] 9.00 0.0% __phys_addr [kernel.kallsyms] 8.00 0.0% nfs_pageio_doio [kernel.kallsyms] 7.00 0.0% _raw_spin_lock_irqsave [kernel.kallsyms] 7.00 0.0% dso__load_sym /usr/local/bin/perf # grep ^nr_ /proc/vmstat nr_free_pages 123806 nr_inactive_anon 52656 nr_active_anon 192039 nr_inactive_file 351876 nr_active_file 92993 nr_unevictable 0 nr_mlock 0 nr_anon_pages 234118 nr_mapped 4652 nr_file_pages 457325 nr_dirty 211 nr_writeback 0 nr_slab_reclaimable 79296 nr_slab_unreclaimable 45221 nr_page_table_pages 57483 nr_kernel_stack 2537 nr_unstable 0 nr_bounce 0 nr_vmscan_write 3387227 nr_writeback_temp 0 nr_isolated_anon 0 nr_isolated_file 0 nr_shmem 144 Looking up flush-major:minor in /proc/self/mountinfo shows that these are all NFS mounts from a few different servers. It doesn't seem like there are any large write sor anything going on at this moment -- no processes are in D state. I started a "sync", which ran for another 10 minutes or so, and then finally exited, and everything returned to normal. Simon- -- 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/ . Fight unfair telecom policy in Canada: sign http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>