heavy I/O load bug in kernel persists in jaunty

[TJ]

On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 21:51 +0100, Khalid Rashid wrote:
> This is a serious issue for a desktop user and should be dealt with in
> order to not scare away potential new users. Is there any chance that
> a kernel developer from ubuntu could look into this issue?

The issue isn't limited to Ubuntu - this is inherited from mainline and
appears to have been an issue for some systems and users since 2.6.17.

The problem is there is no clear definition of what the cause is.

As you can see from the mainline bug-report comments there are similar
symptoms in a wide variety of scenarios with work-arounds that help some
but not others. Overall it is only affecting a very small number of
users which makes it harder to deal with.

It is quite possible that a variety of issues are coming together to
cause the pronounced delays in user experience.

Until a kernel developer in particular can reliably reproduce the
symptoms it is difficult to analyse. As you can see, a couple of
experienced upstream developers are looking at the issue and they stand
a better chance than most at pinning it down.