__/ [Paul Stynen] on Friday 17 February 2006 10:07 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> I am in desparate need of help here. I truly am. I will try to give a
>> detailed yet succinct description of the problem:
>>
>> -I am running SuSE 8.1 (it's an older yet most vital important machine),
>> using KDE
>> -I was doing nothing out of the ordinary (Web browsing) when suddenly
>> memory use jumped up to 100% and all went wrong (everything froze)
>> -I restarted the machine, struggled to get into KDE again and behaviour
>> was erratic (inconsistent logon patterns, getting stuck at different
>> stages). -Sometimes, I could log into KDE, but after a short time
>> (seconds), memory use shot up to 100%
>> -Going to tty1 and logging in as root I can confirm that:
>> * all partitions have free space
>> * kdeinit and kswapd consume a lot of the CPU (if not all), and
>> probably
>> memory too, as soon as tty7 hangs
>>
>> -I tried rebooting without network dependencies, but KDE fails to load or
>> loads up just fine and than hangs
>> -I can reach the login screen just fine and SSH with X-forwarding from the
>> outside.
>>
>> Any ideas or suggestions other than an upgrade? Could it be a
>> hard-drive-related issue? I am backing up everything at this very moment.
>>
>> Many thanks in advance
>
> Check /var/log/messages for errors.
>
> Check if your RAM memory is still OK. If there isn't enough RAM
> available (due to a defect) then the kernel needs to swap constantly and
> does not have enough memory to operate properly.
>
> Paul.
Thanks a lot for the reply, Paul. I have not made any positive progress yet,
apart from obtaining a full, up-to-date backup.
I have just checked the log as you suggested, but there was nothing there
which corresponds to the time of the incident. I checked this very
carefully. It's as if nothing is known to have gone awry.
More observation which might help:
- Both memory usage (512 MB) and swap (1024 MB) jump up to full capacity/use;
CPU is at 100%. WHen SSH'ing from outside, I am able to 'get out of this' by
closing the frozen windows and then waiting for a couple of minutes for the
"close" action to 'percolate'.
- If I SSH from the outside, problems arose only when I ran Konqueror and it
takes anything between seconds to 1 minutes for things to go crazy. kdeinit
and kswapd are the culprits.
I have put my work on hold and I am just eying this newsgroup, waiting for
any of you guys to kindly save my day or suggest what may be causing this.
Many, many thanks in advance.
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