Hello,
I've been having problems with my LM8.1 install, I *think* I've figured out
what's gone wrong, but I'd like a second opinion.
The problem: I can't use my PC for more than an hour or so. I'll be happily
running multiple applications, when suddenly the HD will trash about like
mad, and KDE virtually locks up (becomes so slow as to become unusable).
Sometimes a ctrl+shift+alt+del will log me out and save me, at other times
I've had to switch off the machine after 1/2 hour spent looking at a fixed
screen.
This problem seems to happen more quickly if I have several applications on
the go, so I thought of a memory leak/memory management problem. BTW, I
can't track it down to any one application - it seems to happen whatever I'm
using.
So I've read through the mails on this list, and tried out a few things in
console:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10:09pm up 3 min, 2 users, load average: 1.02, 0.45, 0.17
48 processes: 47 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 14.7% user, 7.3% system, 0.0% nice, 77.8% idle
Mem: 126644K av, 120536K used, 6108K free, 344K shrd,
31876K buff Swap: 0K av, 0K used, 0K free
48260K cached
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
1571 richard 12 0 3964 3964 2900 S 1.9 3.1 0:00 artsd
10:12pm up 6 min, 2 users, load average: 0.51, 0.38, 0.19
54 processes: 53 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 13.3% user, 4.6% system, 0.0% nice, 81.9% idle
Mem: 126644K av, 123684K used, 2960K free, 1048K shrd,
4104K buff Swap: 0K av, 0K used, 0K free
65220K cached
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
1769 richard 19 0 1052 1048 836 R 1.9 0.8 0:00 top
1 root 8 0 104 104 36 S 0.0 0.0 0:04 init
3 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd
4 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
5 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kswapd
6 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kreclaimd
7 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 bdflush
8 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kupdated
9 root -1 -20 0 0 0 SW< 0.0 0.0 0:00 mdrecoveryd
91 root 9 0 252 252 140 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 devfsd
880 root 9 0 240 240 124 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 syslogd
888 root 9 0 988 988 332 S 0.0 0.7 0:00 klogd
982 daemon 9 0 76 76 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 atd
1018 root 9 0 580 564 384 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 xinetd
1188 root 9 0 100 100 32 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 gpm
1244 root 9 0 164 164 64 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 crond
1268 xfs 9 0 4152 4152 576 S 0.0 3.2 0:01 xfs
1376 root 9 0 64 64 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
[richard@localhost richard]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 126644 123532 3112 1048 4104 65220
-/+ buffers/cache: 54208 72436
Swap: 0 0 0
[richard@localhost richard]$
-----------------------------------------------------
The above is an example from the other night, I repeatedly ran 'top' then
'free'. Right after doing the above, I tried to send a large email through
Kmail and my machine locked up.
I don't understand everything in the above output, but I noticed the last
line from 'free' whcih hinted that there was no swap space on my machine.
I then tried this:
----------------------------------------------------------
[root@localhost richard]# fdisk /dev/hda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2494.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2494 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 382 3068383+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 383 2494 16964640 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 383 1857 11847906 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 1858 2494 5116671 83 Linux
Command (m for help): q
[root@localhost richard]# swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
[root@localhost richard]#
----------------------------------------------------------
I'm interpreting the above as meaning that I have no 'swap' partition on my
machine, which would explain why things fall over once I run out of RAM.
So I have two questions here:
1) Am I on the right track here, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
2) If I am right, how do I go about fixing the problem? Alternatively, if
I'm wrong, where should I be looking to explain my system freezes?
Cheers,
Richard
(PS I have no control over the legal disclaimer attached by my employer...)
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