> As a consequence, when memory becomes low, one application after the other,
> the system stops working. The kernel still responds (to a ping for instance)
> but all the applications freeze, apparently as soon as they request memory.
Bernhard Kaindl <bkaindl@netway.at> gave me a good tip: recompile without
SMP defined in the top-level Makefile. This apparently solved the problem
(let's wait a bit to be sure, I tested with many programs + crashme
running at the same time).
So it seems it had no connection with swap at all.