2000-11-28 02:35:24

by Joe

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: out of swap

Last night I was browsing the web and I came across a page with
LOTS of images. There were so many that it drove my swap space
to ZERO. I still had 3 Meg of memory, but the system became
virtually unusable and SLOW. (there were over 150 x 30k+ images
on one page).

Is this something that the OOM would fix or is this another
issue altogether?

The machine has
64Meg of swap space, 128 Meg of RAM, Dual 233MMX, Itis running
2.2.17 and Rh 6.2.

Any ideas? thanks Joe

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2000-11-28 03:19:34

by David Schwartz

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: RE: out of swap


> Last night I was browsing the web and I came across a page with
> LOTS of images. There were so many that it drove my swap space
> to ZERO. I still had 3 Meg of memory, but the system became
> virtually unusable and SLOW. (there were over 150 x 30k+ images
> on one page).
>
> Is this something that the OOM would fix or is this another
> issue altogether?
>
> The machine has
> 64Meg of swap space, 128 Meg of RAM, Dual 233MMX, Itis running
> 2.2.17 and Rh 6.2.
>
> Any ideas? thanks Joe

Add more swap. What would you like the system to do if it's out of both
memory and swap? It can either kill processes or become slow.

DS

2000-11-28 03:51:28

by Joe

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: out of swap

What would I like it to do? Warn me maybe before my swap goes to zero. Kill the
program that is doing this possibly. Allow me to set a per process memory / swap
limit so that no one process can suck up my system resources.

I'd rather not increase swap if possible, as it was only this one page that hosed
my system, and other than that, my system doesn't swap that much if at all.

> > Last night I was browsing the web and I came across a page with
> > LOTS of images. There were so many that it drove my swap space
> > to ZERO. I still had 3 Meg of memory, but the system became
> > virtually unusable and SLOW. (there were over 150 x 30k+ images
> > on one page).
> >
> > Is this something that the OOM would fix or is this another
> > issue altogether?
> >
> > The machine has
> > 64Meg of swap space, 128 Meg of RAM, Dual 233MMX, Itis running
> > 2.2.17 and Rh 6.2.
> >
> > Any ideas? thanks Joe
>
> Add more swap. What would you like the system to do if it's out of both
> memory and swap? It can either kill processes or become slow.
>
> DS

--
Joe Acosta ........
home: [email protected]



2000-11-28 04:07:31

by Kevin Krieser

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: RE: out of swap


> What would I like it to do? Warn me maybe before my swap goes to
> zero. Kill the
> program that is doing this possibly. Allow me to set a per
> process memory / swap
> limit so that no one process can suck up my system resources.
>

There are several programs available with the typical Linux installation
that allows you to monitor swap space. For example, xosview.

There are also settings you can make in Netscape that supposedly limit disk
space usage and memory usage.

2000-11-28 16:17:45

by Jakob Oestergaard

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: out of swap

On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 09:36:33PM -0600, Kevin Krieser wrote:
>
> > What would I like it to do? Warn me maybe before my swap goes to
> > zero. Kill the
> > program that is doing this possibly. Allow me to set a per
> > process memory / swap
> > limit so that no one process can suck up my system resources.
> >
>
> There are several programs available with the typical Linux installation
> that allows you to monitor swap space. For example, xosview.

Yep

>
> There are also settings you can make in Netscape that supposedly limit disk
> space usage and memory usage.

But this doesn't help this particular problem, I think. The problem is probably
not the in-memory cache, but the resource consumption caused by netscape
loading the pictures.

You can use ulimit (or pam) to set memory consumption limits for each process,
and that would usually do the trick (see /etc/pam.d/ and
/etc/security/limits.conf at least on RedHat).

Unfortunately, Netscape sends the images to the X server, so usually you will
see that Netscape's memory consumption stays fairly constant, while your X
server will start consuming lots of memory. If you set the resource limits,
your X server will be the obvious choice for the OOM killer (I guess -
comments, Riel or Andrea ?). I don't know of any good solution to this problem
other than just having enough swap space - after all, seriously, with today's
disks, who can't spare an extra few hundred megs (which would usually be more
than enough).

--
................................................................
: [email protected] : And I see the elder races, :
:.........................: putrid forms of man :
: Jakob ?stergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
: OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:

2000-11-28 21:40:03

by Ben Ford

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: out of swap

Jakob ?stergaard wrote:

<snip>

> comments, Riel or Andrea ?). I don't know of any good solution to this problem
> other than just having enough swap space - after all, seriously, with today's
> disks, who can't spare an extra few hundred megs (which would usually be more
> than enough).

An embedded system for one . . . .

-b

2000-11-28 21:46:55

by Jakob Oestergaard

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: out of swap

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 01:08:44PM -0800, Ben Ford wrote:
> Jakob ?stergaard wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > comments, Riel or Andrea ?). I don't know of any good solution to this problem
> > other than just having enough swap space - after all, seriously, with today's
> > disks, who can't spare an extra few hundred megs (which would usually be more
> > than enough).
>
> An embedded system for one . . . .

If you need to browse heavily illustrated web pages on an embedded system (one
small enough to not have a disk), then use a decent browser...

/me runs... ;)

Usually ulimits can help and tons of swap is uncalled for - but this case where
Netscape makes X consume memory on Netscape's behalf is so rare (I guess), that
I don't think this is a problem worthy of the embedded-systems-VM-discussion.

--
................................................................
: [email protected] : And I see the elder races, :
:.........................: putrid forms of man :
: Jakob ?stergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
: OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............: