EXT4 In Linux 5.6 To See Big Write Performance Boost For Direct I/O

[cjcox]

I feel for the person struggling with OOM, but can you post a new topic and let things thread there?

[Azrael5]

First, if you do have a swap partition, it's not using ext4, so ext4 is definitely not involved.
Second, when I filled my computer's RAM (thanks, Chrome/Chromium), it didn't crash even if I had no swap at all. It just became really, really unresponsive. To the point it would take a minute or so register a mouse click and close a browser window and free up some RAM. That said, it's expected for a computer that's out of RAM to become unresponsive, regardless of the OS used. It's not expected to crash though.

Fwiw, if you have the swap on a HDD, that may/will behave differently.

I cannot unlock the computer because of the crash. Both mouse and keyboard ore not responsive while the hard drive works continuously reading and or writing. this happen when I have opened since 100 or 200 link in chrome and or firefox and other programs are running. some times I have many tasks running because I have to work by all of them. However if ext4 is not responsible of the crash I don't understand which the cause is.

[CommunityMember]

First, if you do have a swap partition, it's not using ext4, so ext4 is definitely not involved.

You *can* add a swapfile on ext4 (a swapfile is not a swap partition of course, but they both provide swap space to the kernel and many people are ignorant about the differences since they operate the same).

The real issue is that once you move to excessive ram pressure, you will encounter a number of well known artifacts, such as ejecting shared libraries, which results in re-reading them again and again from your system disk. It can get ugly fast. This was discussed back in an reference on this site back in August: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...es-Bad-Low-RAM

[bug77]

I don't know if ext4 is envolved in the issue, however I have 8GB of RAM and once they are all occupied the swap partition doesn't help and the computer crashes. I assume that ext4 is envolved in file management. The computer begins to take access of hard drive continuously making the computer unusable once the memory is full.

First, if you do have a swap partition, it's not using ext4, so ext4 is definitely not involved.
Second, when I filled my computer's RAM (thanks, Chrome/Chromium), it didn't crash even if I had no swap at all. It just became really, really unresponsive. To the point it would take a minute or so register a mouse click and close a browser window and free up some RAM. That said, it's expected for a computer that's out of RAM to become unresponsive, regardless of the OS used. It's not expected to crash though.

Fwiw, if you have the swap on a HDD, that may/will behave differently.

[clavko]

I think of databases.

Yup, databases might feel some love, though not necessarily all of them - Postgre is using mostly buffered I/O, while e.g. MySQL and clones (as well as Oracle iirc) use Direct I/O. So your mileage may vary.

[Azrael5]

He probably didn't created a Swap partition/file and is looking for a fix the laziest way.

I don't know if ext4 is envolved in the issue, however I have 8GB of RAM and once they are all occupied the swap partition doesn't help and the computer crashes. I assume that ext4 is envolved in file management. The computer begins to take access of hard drive continuously making the computer unusable once the memory is full.

[edwaleni]

He probably didn't created a Swap partition/file and is looking for a fix the laziest way.

Not to feed the off topic beast, but I get the same thing periodically and I have a healthy swap. It's not an EXT4 issue. Its a general Linux issue when under memory pressure and has been covered in various blogs including Phoronix. Google can be his friend.

[bug77]

Yeah, don't you just hate it when your writes are limited to 3GB/s? :P

[M@GOid]

I'm not trying to be an ass, but, how exactly does EXT4 have anything to do with you running out of RAM?

He probably didn't created a Swap partition/file and is looking for a fix the laziest way.

[schmidtbag]

Once the RAM is full the operating system crashes the computer. Why? I currently use the 5.0 kernell and ext4 on Kde Neon operating system.

I'm not trying to be an ass, but, how exactly does EXT4 have anything to do with you running out of RAM?