Hello,

coping big files to a usb 1.1 external harddrive brings the machine to
stop responding. Since the machine does work as before for some time
after the copy process was started I guess that memory gets filled with
dirty pages and at some time the kernel decides to wait until some have
been written to disk.

What I don't understand is, why the whole machine stops responding and
not just the cp process.

Here is a top sniplet (in this case rsync was used to copy data):

15   0  1264 1264   920 R     0.4  0.0   0:00   0 top
15   0     0    0     0 DW    0.0  0.0   0:02   0 bdflush
15   0     0    0     0 DW    0.0  0.0   0:03   0 kupdated
16   0     0    0     0 DW    0.0  0.0   0:22   0 usb-storage-0
15   0     0    0     0 DW    0.0  0.0   0:01   0 kjournald
15   0   556  556   384 D     0.0  0.0   0:12   0 rsync
15   0  1704 1704  1292 R     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 sshd

I have reproduced this effect on diffrent Hardware: IBM Thinkpad, some
Siemens/Fujitsu Box, Dell Poweredge 650. With these Kernels: 2.4.22-jari
(thinkpad) and two times RH AS 3.0 2.4.21-4.0.1.EL (siemens and dell).

Mounting the usb drive -o sync helps to keep the machine responsive, but
decreases the not-too-fast-usb-11 performance even more.

regards
        Stefan
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Stefan V�lkel                            [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Millenux GmbH                              mobile: +49.170.79177.17
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