2.6.14.5 / swapping / killing random apps

[Trilight <trilight@ns666.com>]

Hiya all,

I was wondering about the following;


kernel: 2.6.14.5 / vanilla

If a system with say a swap of 2GB on a fast drive and like 260MB is
actively used for swapping, could it cause certain applications to crash
? I noticed that the when swapping occurs, usualy above 200MB then
random apps start to crash. Sometimes gnome-terminal, gnome-panel,
xchat, metacity and so on. It happens a few times in usually 48 hours.

The system has 512MB ram, ECC , checked and cleared. The system can be
booted with m$ xp or freebsd but crashes do not occur even under heavy
load. So that's why i'm thinking something is causing this behaviour in
linux. I also have to say that dmcrypt was used for the swap but that
caused the crashes to increase, so dmcrypt is not used anymore just a
normal swap and crashes decreased to "rare" within 24 hours.

Or is it "normal" that the crash risk of running apps increases the more
swapping is done ?

I plan to upgrade the memory to 1.5GB anyway, but this issue is kinda
bothering me.

Thanks in advance for any input !

Mark