I/O scheduling (pdflush) on the XO

[Mikus Grinbergs]

>> For the fun of it, started a resource-intensive task (100% CPU,
>> sporadic floods of disk writes) on my G1G1 XO.  Eventually, it
>> failed with a "severe (38)" fortran error trying to write its
>> checkpoint file {mikus note: many quick small write operations}.
> 
> Why? This device has a 433 MHz 32-bit processor, 256 MB of RAM and
> a 1 GB jffs2 flash disk. What do you expect?

I did not know what to expect -- perhaps that it would run slowly, 
but that it _would_ run.  What I posted was a report of my 
experience.  [I do expect that sooner or later some other XO owner 
will try to run a resource-intensive task on it.]

>> ... 'top' showed 'pdflush' requiring lots of CPU ...
> 
> Again, where's the surprise here? An XO is *not* a scientific
> workstation! It's a computer for elementary school students!

To me it *was* a surprise to find at times 'pdflush' using more than 
half of the CPU power of my XO.  I thought this was worth reporting.

mikus