Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Fernando Rodriguez]

On 02/19/2017 07:53 AM, Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I
> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of
> open tabs.
> 
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
> 
> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not
> enough memory.

Yes, just disable swap as that is what happens when you run out of swap.
You can configure the likelihood of a process being killed through
/proc//oom_adj. If you disable it for all processes after boot (ie.
through a script) then only the "additional" programs can be killed but
that may any program that's using a lot of memory so it may not be a
good idea for a desktop. See
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/oom-killer-1911807.html

> Many thanks for a hint,
> Helmut
> 


-- 

Fernando Rodriguez

Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Andrew Savchenko]

Hi,

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 13:53:49 +0100 Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I  
> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of  
> open tabs.
> 
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
> 
> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not  
> enough memory.

1. Use reasonable -j and -l options in MAKEOPTS. A good start will
be -j N and -l 2*N, where N is a number of your logical cores.

2. Set the lowest CPU and I/O priorities for emerge:
PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 and run emerge as `ionice -c3 emerge ...`,
you have to use CFQ scheduler to be able to use ionice.

3. Use zswap with z3fold allocator. It helps me well on my laptop
with 2GB RAM.

4. If everything above doesn't help:
a) reduce -j to a value where memory usage is suitable for you;
b) consider using -Os in your {C,CXX,F,FC}FLAGS, since such system
is certainly short of memory.

5. If even 4. doesn't help, consider using more powerful host to
build binary packages for this one.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko


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Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Neil Bothwick]

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 14:36:17 +0100, Miroslav Rovis wrote:

> > # killa chromium  
> # killall 
> in this case likely (never installed any of Schmoog's browsers):
> # killall chromium

It's "killall chrome".


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A pessimist complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.


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Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 01:53:49PM +0100, Helmut Jarausch wrote

> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when
> I start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a
> lot of open tabs.
> 
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)

  You may not like this answer, but here goes...

  Shut down X before emerging memory-hungry ebuilds.  I don't mean
{CTRL}{ALT}{F1} switching to a text console; I mean log out of X
altogether.  Without the memory overhead of X and various programs
running, you'll be able to compile Chromium a lot faster.  Doing that,
I've built Pale Moon (a Firefox fork) from source on an ancient Atom
netbook with 2 gigs of ram in approximately 6 hours.  I had to select
maximum cpu speed and "makeopts=-j3", but it works.

  A few questions...
1) How much ram do you have?
2) How large is your swap partition?
3) Do you use ramdisks?
4) Do you use a lot of space for files in /dev/shm?
5) How much spare space do you have on your hard drive?

-- 
Walter Dnes 
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Johannes Rosenberger]

On 19.02.2017 14:41, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote:
> Helmut Jarausch  [17-02-19 14:04]:
>> Hi,
>>
>> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I 
>> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of 
>> open tabs.
>>
>> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
>> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
>>
>> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not 
>> enough memory.
>>
>> Many thanks for a hint,
>> Helmut
>>
> Hi Helmut,
>
> I know that situation very well...additionally I have Blender
> open...
>
> But I think that the "freeze" of the system is not due to the memory
> amount but due to the heavy I/O while swapping.

I think so, too.

> May be a tool like ionice could help you to keep the possibility
> of killing certain processes. Ionice the emerge itself and additinally
> nice it also.
> The emerge may take longer, but a frozen system is even slower...
> ;)
>
> HTH!
> Cheers
> Meino

You can also use a compressed swap partition in RAM via zram
(Instructions: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Zram).
Then your system is still responsive enough to kill chromium when you
realize that your memory fills up.

It should also be possible to somehow dynamically set memory quotas but
I've not tried it yet. It might work via cgroups (which portage can use
natively).

Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Meino . Cramer]

Helmut Jarausch  [17-02-19 14:04]:
> Hi,
> 
> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I 
> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of 
> open tabs.
> 
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
> 
> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not 
> enough memory.
> 
> Many thanks for a hint,
> Helmut
> 

Hi Helmut,

I know that situation very well...additionally I have Blender
open...

But I think that the "freeze" of the system is not due to the memory
amount but due to the heavy I/O while swapping.

May be a tool like ionice could help you to keep the possibility
of killing certain processes. Ionice the emerge itself and additinally
nice it also.
The emerge may take longer, but a frozen system is even slower...
;)

HTH!
Cheers
Meino

Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Miroslav Rovis]

On 170219-14:11+0100, Miroslav Rovis wrote:
...
> Try Ctrl+Alt+Fx
> where x is one of F1 ... F6
> and then issue:
> # killa chromium
# killall 
in this case likely (never installed any of Schmoog's browsers):
# killall chromium

-- 
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
https://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr


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Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Mick]

On Sunday 19 Feb 2017 13:53:49 Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I
> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of
> open tabs.
> 
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
> 
> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not
> enough memory.
> 
> Many thanks for a hint,
> Helmut

I assume you know setting --jobs= and --load-average= in emerge or in your 
MAKEOPTS directive in /etc/portage/make.conf.  You can also set 
PORTAGE_NICENESS in make.conf, which will be added to the nice value portage 
is running with.  But these will not affect disk I/O bottlenecks.  Consider 
running emerge with ionice[1] to control disk bottlenecks.

[1] /usr/src/linux/Documentation/block/ioprio.txt

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Miroslav Rovis]

On 170219-13:53+0100, Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I  
Ebuilds are just text files, they don't run in the background...

> start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of  
> open tabs.
( Chromium is the most privacy-invading browser ever. It's a spyware, I
could never use it, but forget about that, it's not what this topic is
about... )
> In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
> What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)
Try Ctrl+Alt+Fx
where x is one of F1 ... F6
and then issue:
# killa chromium
> 
> Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not  
> enough memory.
> 
> Many thanks for a hint,
> Helmut
>
This could be a hardware, not a software issue. Also, not sure, but
looks like, not a memory issue, but a CPU issue.

It's likely the CPU triggers the BIOS to shut down because CPU gets too
hot, but because it is not properly implemented, what happens is even
worse than doing nothing, and that is: the system freezes, but the CPU
keeps running... Bad!

How warm does you machine, try to touch it in the back, or under, if
it's a laptop, where ther CPU is?

It reminds me of what I had. My systems, that had only the original,
run-of-the-mill coolers on the CPUs (I bought a few of same model MBO,
so i can clone my systems)... The usual 80mm coolers.

As soon as I replaced them with 120mm coolers, no issues any more.

Regards!
-- 
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
https://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr


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[gentoo-user] How to keep my system from (nearly) freezing?

[Helmut Jarausch]

Hi,

sometime I have some memory hungry ebuilds in the background, when I  
start (e.g.) Chromium which needs very much memory if you have a lot of  
open tabs.


In that case my system nearly freezes. I cannot even kill chrome.
What can I do in that case. (Remote login doesn't work either)

Can I have any additional program (like Chromium) die if there is not  
enough memory.


Many thanks for a hint,
Helmut