*BSD News Article 4888


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From: brad@cuba.cayman (Brad Parker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386BSD hangs
Message-ID: <BRAD.92Sep11104423@cuba.cayman>
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:44:23 GMT
References: <ZCO6TOH@desert.in-berlin.de> <david.715668854@mlb.geomechanics.csiro.au>
	<1992Sep8.190240.23921@hippo.ru.ac.za>
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In-reply-to: ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za's message of 8 Sep 92 19:02:40 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.190240.23921@hippo.ru.ac.za> ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za (Mike Lawrie) writes:

   >I have had that happening. It usually happens when I do two large things
   >such as run GCC twice while under Xwindows.. The swapping will halt, and
   >the machine will go quiet. And stay that way.

   Similar experience here. Do two large "makes" of libraries and binaries
   from separate telnet sessions, and the system reboots every now and
   again. Bit of a curse, as it does not recognise the WD enet card at
   reboot unless I press the hardware reset button.

I did some *very* simple testing and found that the system initially slows
way down and the stops if you run out of swap space.  (I really wanted
pstat -s at the point ;-)  Anyway, I looked around but was unable to
find any swap space stats gathering, so I gave up.

Does anyone know of or have any fixes for running out of swap space
gracefully?

-brad
--
A metaphor is like a simile.

Brad Parker	Cayman Systems, Inc., Cambridge, Ma.	brad@cayman.com