Comment 196 for bug 330824

I registered just to say that I have been seriously affected by this bug, and it certainly deserves more than the "medium" designation. Single core, ~1GHz processor, would deadlock consistently on rm -rf'ing a directory of photos (~4MB each, thousands of them) using the stock ubuntu kernel 2.6.28-11 (then -.13) on an ext4 filesystem (native), LVMed and RAID-1. All of the LVM & RAID overhead might have exacerbated the bug if it was a race condition.

I love Linux in general, and have been very happy with the "hands off" safe, stable feel of Ubuntu distros, but this latest install was a freaking disaster since I primarily use this machine remotely. If EXT4 was known to be so unstable, it should have been marked so. Since the bug has been known for months, and people have offered to ship pre-installed machines that can reliably reproduce the problem, some more progress should have been made. Admittedly, it's tough to bitch when I haven't done anything to help fix the problem, but seriously I would be much happier if someone just upgraded the bug status from "medium".

I've gone to the mainline kernel 2.6.30 and I had to install the newer 180 version of nvidia drivers in order to do so. Very helpful directions for how to do this are given here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-common/+bug/384639. After the switch to the mainline kernel, no problem with the mass deletes. I highly suggest that anyone having this problem do the same. These directions should be linked on the main Ubuntu Jaunty page. Releasing with ext4 (without any sort of cautionary warnings in the installer!) in this shape was a serious mistake.

Ubuntu folks, when am I going to be able to tell my mom it's a good idea to ditch the Windows and go Ubuntu?