Linux-kernel mailing list archive 1999-22,: Re: Everyone's a captain on a calm sea...

# Re: Everyone's a captain on a calm sea...

Marcelo Tosatti (marcelo@conectiva.com.br)
Mon, 31 May 1999 16:39:08 -0300 (EST)

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On Mon, 31 May 1999 nads@bleh.org wrote:

> Ted Rolle wrote:
>
> > I am having unfortunate experiences with Linux.
> > It seems that Netscape can cause it to lock up so tightly that I need to
> > hit the power switch to get it back. This is NOT good.
> >
> > It seems that the OS should be able to detect a rogue application
> > and take some corrective action -- just letting me log in on a different
> > terminal to kill the offending process would be sufficient.
> >
> > Of course, there is the possibility that my configuration is incorrect...
> >
> > Can someone help out?
> >
> > Ted
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
> I have this _exact_ same problem. I've noticed tihs especially on 2.2.x. It
> seems that any application that goes astray can bring the system to a near
> halt. The system doens't die (ping from other machines get responses) but its
> *so* slow that it takes minutes for keyboard/mouse actions to have responses
> in X/console.
>
> I am currently running Redhat 6.0 and 2.2.9. I have 96 megs of ram and 96 of
> swap. I am planning on adding 128 mroe megs of physical ram, however I don't
> think this is giong to help. An application that goes astray can still eat up
> all my memory and cause the system to be unusable. Last time this problem
> happened, it was due to a perl script that had a function that recursed
> endlessly. I had called this script in an xterm and the system had alreadyb
> ecome _way_ to slow for me to do anything about by the time I noticed.
> I walked to another machine to try to ping the the slowed down one, and sure
> enough there were responses.Luckily enough, when I walked back to the
> original machine, X had died ( and thus the child perl process died ) and
> with the exception of several other daemons dying, the machine had returned
> to a normal _usable_ state.
>
> Is there anything I can do about this? Someway to have the kernel regulate on
> non-root process that are taking up too much resources? Or some key combo to
> throw me to a console with a high priority. Or something?
man setrlimit
man getrlimit
man getrusage

- Marcelo

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