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User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.6 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020830

Description of problem:
I am running Red Hat linux v8.0, kernel 18-24, running on a P4 with 750+mb of
ram and 1.5gb of swap. Sometimes when I 'make' a large package (such as alsa9),
my computer freezes and my hard drive starts spinning. I cannot move the mouse,
keyboard strokes don't work, and I can't even log on from another terminal. This
problem has occurred only while I was doing a 'make (gcc/g++) on programs. It
didn't seem to matter WHICH programs I was compiling.

After running 'top' to spy on processes, I found that, during a make,
the kernel daemon,'kswapd', was taking over 85% of the CPU time and 100% of
memory and swap space. 

Here's the output of top:
---
3:59pm up 1 day, 2:01, 2 users, load average: 22.91, 14.28, 6.48
140 processes: 129 sleeping, 9 running, 2 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 2.9% user, 81.7% system, 0.0% nice, 15.2% idle
Mem: 764400K av, 757412K used, 6988K free, 0K shrd, 848K buff
Swap: 1566328K av, 1566328K used, 0K free 10620K cached

5 root 25 0 0 0 0 RW 78.7 0.0 10:38 kswapd
10560 swells 15 0 4036 3056 844 R 1.1 0.3 1:13 xmms
10568 swells 15 0 256 140 88 S 0.6 0.0 0:12 esd
1002 root 5 -10 151M 4492 780 S < 0.3 0.5 326:28 X
15702 swells 15 0 548 512 264 R 0.3 0.0 0:24 top
6289 swells 15 0 17592 8784 1420 S 0.2 1.1 3:41 galeon-bin
25907 mailman 15 0 1856 1840 576 R 0.2 0.2 0:00 python
25912 mailman 15 0 1620 1620 532 R 0.2 0.2 0:00 python
1898 swells 15 0 38372 3840 392 D 0.1 0.5 0:23 gnome-panel
1906 swells 15 0 10140 2868 584 D 0.1 0.3 2:01 rhn-applet-gui
10647 swells 15 0 3864 1492 648 D 0.1 0.1 0:12 evolution-mail
25908 mailman 15 0 1616 1616 532 D 0.1 0.2 0:00 python
25910 mailman 15 0 1620 1596 532 R 0.1 0.2 0:00 python
25916 mailman 15 0 1376 1372 520 R 0.1 0.1 0:00 python
25922 lp 15 0 472 360 276 D 0.1 0.0 0:00 lpd
1 root 15 0 88 44 28 S 0.0 0.0 0:05 init
2 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd

There are a few more processes, but they seem to be irrelevent

When the process finishes, I get:
4:08pm up 1 day, 2:09, 2 users, load average: 7.45, 21.66, 14.78
119 processes: 114 sleeping, 3 running, 2 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.7% user, 0.5% system, 0.0% nice, 98.6% idle
Mem: 764400K av, 102644K used, 661756K free, 0K shrd, 2368K buff
Swap: 1566328K av, 146008K used, 1420320K free 30452K cached

I am using gcc/g++ version 3.2.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.d/l alsa9
2.Run ./configure, then make
3.It might take a few 'makes' before it happens. If so, do a 'make clean'
between each make
    

Actual Results:  The computer freezes...kswapd eats all my resources.

Expected Results:  I have plenty of memory and 1.5gb of swap. so this should not
have happened.

Additional info: