Bug 3128

Summary:	kernel panic when swap space exhausted.
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	simra
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Status:	CLOSED DEFERRED	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-05-29 15:53:57 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description simra 1999-05-28 18:37:49 UTC

Here's my system: i686, 128MB RAM, 136548k swap space.
kernel 2.2.5-15,  passing kernel flag "mem=128M".

When my swap space is exhausted, the machine simply stops.
It's not thrashing- it just stops.  No mouse response, no
keyboard response, the HD LED is not on.

It's very difficult to collect any other diagnostics, but I
was watching 'top' as the machine ran out of memory and top
observed that the swap space remaining was 0k.

I will forward this bug report to
linux-kernel.edu

Comment 1 simra 1999-05-28 18:40:59 UTC

I should mention that I'm using the stock kernel from the redhat
distro. The following modules were resident:

Module                  Size  Used by
nfs                    29944   9  (autoclean)
lockd                  30856   1  (autoclean) [nfs]
sunrpc                 52356   1  (autoclean) [nfs lockd]
3c59x                  18920   1  (autoclean)

R

Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 1999-05-29 15:53:59 UTC

The "solution" is to add more swap space. There are many, many
deadlock conditions in the kernel that can be exercised by running
out of swap.