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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU!werple.apana.org.au!news From: andrew@werple.apana.org.au (Andrew Herbert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Occasional system hangs Date: 14 Dec 1992 12:52:54 +1100 Organization: werple public-access unix, Melbourne Lines: 44 Message-ID: <1ggpdnINN63l@werple.apana.org.au> References: <andrewh.724059111@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au> <1gaclpINN84v@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> <1992Dec11.210430.17335@coe.montana.edu> <Bz495r.Byn@ns1.nodak.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: werple.apana.org.au Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu> wrote: > Did all of you with 16+ Megs of RAM apply the patch to restrict the size of > bufpages (Terry Lambert's patchkit patch #2. Yup. I'm also currently using 4MB of kernel memory to avoid the kmem_map exhaustion problems I was still getting even after applying the patch. Works well, despite being somewhat wasteful! I've applied all the relevant beta patchkit fixes (thanks Terry!), plus most (reasonable looking :) fixes posted to comp.unix.bsd. Plus a few from bde@runx.oz.au to prevent hangs and panics in the pty and 387 handlers respectively. And a fix for an ICMP redirect problem that caused 3 out of the 6 panics that have occurred since I installed ddb and started tracking them down about a week ago (just about to post that one...). > Besides, there are small memory leaks in the kernel; Programs that fork a lot, > cause the system to hang (make and apparently news); Big programs like X FYI, INN doesn't fork much at all. It is big though - here is what ps -alxw has to say about it: UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND 200 75 1 0 28 0 4828 2928 - Rs ?? 13:43.31 in.innd -p4 Are these small memory leaks you mention pages being lost in the VM code, or kernel malloc()/free() related? Since Julian's fix for the raw socket problem that was hogging malloc(x, MBUF) space when ping or traceroute were run, I haven't noticed any significant malloc leaks. > I agree that a kernel fix is better than a symptom avoidance technique. > The kernel change is massive. The VM allows over extention of the swap > backstore (and this can lead to the system freeze -- all of the swap .... > are put on swap backstore, but backstore is full ... system will work the > drive a little but will eventually freeze. Thanks for the explanation - it clarified a number of things for me. So would you agree that adding enough RAM to avoid paging/swapping most of the time would help avoid this problem? cheers, Andrew andrew@werple.apana.org.au, andrewh@cs.monash.edu.au