Re: Strange behavior: pgbench and new Linux kernels

On Thu, 17 Apr 2008, Jeffrey Baker wrote:

> This has been discussed recently on linux-kernel.

Excellent pointer, here's direct to the interesting link there:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=120574906013029&w=2

Ingo's test system has 16 cores and dives hard at >32 clients; my 4-core
system has trouble with >8 clients; looks like the same behavior.  And it
seems to be fixed in 2.6.25, which just "shipped" literally in the middle
of my testing last night.  Had I waited until today to grab a kernel I
probably would have missed the whole thing.

I'll have to re-run to be sure (I just love running a kernel with the
paint still wet) but it looks like the conclusion here is "don't run
PostgreSQL on kernels 2.6.23 or 2.6.24".  Good thing I already hated FC8.

If all these kernel developers are using sysbench, we really should get
that thing cleaned up so it runs well with PostgreSQL.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD