vinny> The segfault was something that I defintely expected. It
vinny> should and did on my system. But when a program takes up
vinny> too many resources the kernel is supposed to kill it
vinny> right?. Then why did the kernel fail to do so in the second
I have had a problem myself, with Linux 2.2.12, that sounds
similar.
A process (wish I knew what one!!!!) started consuming all available
memory on my computer, and it suddenly started thrashing. I couldn't
do anything with the console, except switch from one screen to
another.
There was nothing I could do. Eventually, I got messages that
said there was not enough memory, and the computer started killing
of random (and relatively small) processes.
I would have liked to be able to run top and/or kill of one of the
main memory hogs (eg squid), but as the computer wouldn't let me, and
I was getting impatient, I pushed the reset button instead.
As I have had this problem occur three times now, I always have top
running now, so if a problem occurs again, at least I will know what
process to blame.
FYI: This is the typical output of free on my computer, when running
xemacs:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 31088 30328 760 19316 744 8612
-/+ buffers/cache: 20972 10116
Swap: 24660 8392 16268
IMHO, this should be more sufficient. Sometimes I suspect squid might
be the problem, but never been able to prove/disprove it.
In this same thread, I saw a patch for 'OOM fixes'. Would this help
my problem?
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