Bug 4224

Summary: Filling swap partition affects window launches
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Brian Gunney <btng>
Component: kernelAssignee: Cristian Gafton <gafton>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-08-23 15:41:30 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Brian Gunney 1999-07-27 17:23:01 UTC
Something seems to fail whenever I push the swap partition
to the limit (or at least close to it).  From that point on,
launching applications such as xterm, xfig, xdvi and emacs
(but NOT 'emacs -nw') gets me a bus error and core dump.
Netscape also fails with bus error but no core dump.  Not
all applications launching windows fail though; xv, gimp,
ee, xosview, gnome-help-browser, seem to be unaffected.

Shutting down and restarting the X server (by going down to
run level 1) does not fix the problem, but reboot does fix
it. If nothing is done, eventually (some hours later), the
problem goes away.

The problem appears with gdm and xdm as the display manager.
I'm running RH6.0, kernel-2.2.5-22, XFree86-3.3.3.1-52,
XFree86-SVGA-3.3.3.1-52.

Hardware: Intel MMX 166 MHz.  64MB RAM.  120MB swap
partition.

Comment 1 Preston Brown 1999-08-23 15:41:59 UTC
You are running into an out of memory condition, and when you are out
of memory, unpredictible things happen (i.e. clients will crash
unexpectedly).

Solution: increase swap space of keep less programs resident in
memory.

Comment 2 Brian Gunney 1999-08-24 12:02:59 UTC
Okay, but this condition seems to leave a lot of room for mischief.
Seems that ideally, afer some programs have been closed, the condition
should disappear instead of linger.