From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Nick Piggin <piggin@cyberone.com.au>
Subject: Re: Crazy load average & unkillable processes
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:33:25 +1000
Sender: linux-admin-owner@vger.kernel.org
Message-ID: <3F4DCC65.2010106@cyberone.com.au>
References: <3F4D339A.8010907@geekz.za.net> <20030828085549.GB264@schottelius.org>
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To: Nico Schottelius <nico-linux-admin-ml@schottelius.org>
Cc: Ross Clarke <encrypted@geekz.za.net>, Linux-Admin <linux-admin@vger.kernel.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org



Nico Schottelius wrote:

>Very interesting..
>with the test4 I experiene the same/similar problems on my laptop..
>all of sudden yesterday several programs died -> Out of Memory.
>I ran
>   Xfree
>   dhcpcd
>   opera 
>   several xterms (about 6)
>   qmail
>   named
>
>first opera was Out of Memory, then died the whole X system with all
>xterms and X beeing Out of Memory.
>
>MemTotal:       385600 kB
>
>which should be more than enough!
>

You might have a process with a memory leak. How much free memory do
you have before everything dies? How much swapping activity is going
on? What do /proc/meminfo and /proc/slabinfo say?