today I tried to install Linux on a machine for a friend. While I formatted
the harddisk with mke2fs:
mke2fs 1.04, 16-May-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
the system stalled with the well known message
"Couldn't get a free page"
as Marcus Berglund reported too.
At that time I ran pre-2.0.31-6 applied to a clean 2.0.30 The partition was
1000MByte on /dev/hdc, a Quantum 6.3 GByte Drive. I have a P5/133 with 32
MByte Ram and 100MByte Swap. After some time the system came back shortly, I
killed X to get more place, but when restarting mke2fs, I got another stall,
seemingly indefinite. Not knowning what the magic keys are, I tried several
combinations of the shift/control/scroll lock/etc keys. Here is what I found
in the syslog after hitting reset (Sorry, I was in a hurry). Rebooting into
2.0.31-pre5 and setting freepages to 512 1024 2048 let be complete my task.
Sorry, the disk to format is away now, and I won't be available tile Sunday
evening too.
Bye
20:13:56 : Couldn't get a free page.....
20:14:49 : Mem-info:
20:14:49 : Free pages: 824kB
20:14:49 : ( 122*4kB 18*8kB 10*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 0*128kB = 824kB)
20:14:49 : Swap cache: add 292/292, delete 1254615/292, find 4498/0
20:14:49 : Free swap: 103312kB
20:14:49 : 8192 pages of RAM
20:14:49 : 214 free pages
20:14:49 : 504 reserved pages
20:14:49 : 442 pages shared
20:14:49 : Buffer memory: 21020kB
20:14:49 : Buffer heads: 21054
20:14:49 : Buffer blocks: 21020
20:14:49 : CLEAN: 80 buffers, 40 used (last=40), 0 locked, 0 protected, \
0 dirty
20:14:49 : LOCKED: 20921 buffers, 37 used (last=37), 0 locked, 0 \
protected, 0 dirty
20:14:49 : Networking buffers in use : 32
20:14:49 : Network buffers locked by drivers : 0
20:14:49 : Total network buffer allocations : 233066
20:14:49 : Total failed network buffer allocs : 0
20:14:49 : Total free while locked events : 0
20:14:49 : IP fragment buffer size : 0
20:14:51 : Mem-info:
20:14:51 : Free pages: 808kB
20:14:51 : ( 116*4kB 17*8kB 11*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 0*128kB = 808kB)
20:14:51 : Swap cache: add 296/296, delete 1254620/292, find 4498/0
20:14:51 : Free swap: 103312kB
20:14:51 : 8192 pages of RAM
20:14:51 : 210 free pages
20:14:51 : 504 reserved pages
20:14:51 : 442 pages shared
20:14:51 : Buffer memory: 21020kB
20:14:51 : Buffer heads: 21050
20:14:51 : Buffer blocks: 21020
20:14:51 : CLEAN: 81 buffers, 40 used (last=40), 0 locked, 0 protected,\
0 dirty
20:14:51 : LOCKED: 20919 buffers, 37 used (last=37), 0 locked, 0\
protected, 0 dirty
20:14:51 : DIRTY: 3 buffers, 0 used (last=0), 0 locked, 0 protected, 3\
dirty
20:14:51 : Networking buffers in use : 32
20:14:51 : Network buffers locked by drivers : 0
20:14:51 : Total network buffer allocations : 233088
20:14:51 : Total failed network buffer allocs : 0
20:14:51 : Total free while locked events : 0
20:14:51 : IP fragment buffer size : 0
20:14:52 : Mem-info:
20:14:52 : Free pages: 804kB
20:14:52 : ( 115*4kB 17*8kB 11*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 0*128kB = 804kB)
20:14:52 : Swap cache: add 296/296, delete 1254623/292, find 4498/0
20:14:52 : Free swap: 103312kB
20:14:52 : 8192 pages of RAM
20:14:52 : 209 free pages
20:14:52 : 504 reserved pages
20:14:52 : 443 pages shared
20:14:52 : Buffer memory: 21020kB
20:14:52 : Buffer heads: 21050
20:14:52 : Buffer blocks: 21020
20:14:52 : CLEAN: 81 buffers, 40 used (last=40), 0 locked, 0 protected,\
0 dirty
20:14:52 : LOCKED: 20916 buffers, 34 used (last=34), 0 locked, 0 \
protected, 0 dirty
20:14:52 : DIRTY: 9 buffers, 3 used (last=8), 0 locked, 0 protected, \
9 dirty
20:14:52 : Networking buffers in use : 32
20:14:52 : Network buffers locked by drivers : 0
20:14:52 : Total network buffer allocations : 233111
20:14:52 : Total failed network buffer allocs : 0
20:14:52 : Total free while locked events : 0
20:14:52 : IP fragment buffer size : 0
-- Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.deInstitut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt --------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------