On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:28:01 +0200
Geert Hendrickx <ghen@telenet.be> wrote:

> Hi there, 
> 
> I often see my X server completely freeze for 10 seconds or more when doing
> a cvs up, or untarring a large file.  I notice this problem especially on
> machines with a lot (1Gb) of RAM.  Is this normal/acceptable, or a known
> problem, or just a matter of tuning things here?  
> 
> 	Geert

Below is what I have in /etc/sysctl.conf on my desktop machine

#reset to min values to avoid invalid argument errors
vm.anonmin=1
vm.anonmax=1
vm.execmin=1
vm.execmax=1
vm.filemin=1
vm.filemax=1

#set to real values
vm.anonmin=80
vm.anonmax=95
vm.execmin=10
vm.execmax=60
vm.filemin=1
vm.filemax=1

Also I found that enabling experimental buffer queue strategy in the kernel
(you'd have to recompile the kernel with BUFQ options) helps to make things
more responsive under heavy I/O