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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!hrd769.brooks.af.mil!hrd769.brooks.af.mil!not-for-mail From: news@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (InterNet News) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Occasional system hangs Date: 11 Dec 1992 09:38:32 -0600 Organization: Armstrong Lab MIS, Brooks AFB TX Lines: 32 Message-ID: <1gaclpINN84v@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> References: <ByysLH.Axr@ns1.nodak.edu> <1g95ueINNhri@manuel.anu.edu.au> <andrewh.724059111@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: hrd769.brooks.af.mil In article <andrewh.724059111@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au> andrewh@cs.monash.edu.au (Andrew Herbert) writes: -titus@coombs.anu.edu.au (titus chiu) writes: - -[386bsd hang description deleted] - ->In article <ByysLH.Axr@ns1.nodak.edu> tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu (Mark Tinguely) writes: ->>this is the infamous VM problem. When swap is filled (or gets totally ->>fragmented), the system can freeze. The nature of the VM makes this problem ->>very difficult to totally solve. There are attempts to correct this problem ->>for good. You can avoid the symptoms by adding more swap space. You must - ->hmmm .. we already have 24 megs of swap space and 8 megs of ram on the ->system that jason described.. we could always add a 2nd swap i guess :P - -My system, with 16 MB RAM and 32 MB swap, hangs in a similar way. Existing -processes such as INN processing incoming news and nntplinks sending outgoing -news usually keep ticking away for quite some time (i.e. disk is unaffected), -but it looks a whole lot like anything requiring a fork(), such as programs -are run from the shell just hangs. Eventually all processes grind to a halt, -but the system can still be pinged. The VM problem sounds quite a likely -cause, alas. gcc 2.3.1 is particularly good at bringing about this problem, -while X8514 and friends rarely lasts more than 12 hours without hanging 386bsd -and requiring a reboot. - -Time for more RAM I guess! > I don't think more RAM will help. I have 32M of RAM and and 32M swap partition. It still hangs. nroff is the usual culprit for me. TSgt Dave Burgess NCOIC AL/MIS