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- Path: sparky!uunet!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
-