Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [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.
Still it looks to me you're only getting in trouble as soon as a memory
consuming process (X related) is started. What does the 'top' command
report when you are getting in trouble ? There must be a process which
has a very high %MEM which causes the kernel to swap continuously.
Paul.
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