Thursday, March 28, 2013
The end result was a computer producing vast amounts of nothing very slowly
So, I run this loadtest program on my work computer. It's going, I can
see the components I'm testing registering events (via the realtime
viewer I wrote for syslogintr).
Everything is going fine … and … … then … … … t … h … e …
… c … o … m … p … … u … … … t … … … … e … …
… … … r … … … … … … … … s … … … … … … …
… … … l … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … o
… … … … … … … … … … … … w … … … … … …
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
… … … … … s …
It takes about ten minutes to type and run, but this:
[spc]saltmine:~>uptime 14:44:20 up 6 days, 23:12, 10 users, load average: 2320.45, 1277.98, 546.61
was quite amusing to see (usually the load average is 0). Perhaps it was just a tad ambitious to simulate 10,000 units on the work computer (each unit its own thread, running a Lua script—yes, even after the modifications to the Lua interpreter).
Also amusing was this:
[spc]saltmine:~>free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3910888 640868 3270020 0 35568 185848
-/+ buffers/cache: 419452 3491436
Swap: 11457532 544260 10913272
Yes, eleven gigabytes of memory were shoved out to the disk, so most of the slowless was due to thrashing.
Perhaps I should find some fellow cow-orker's computer to run this on …
