** This bug is no longer a duplicate of bug 620074 Thrashing turns system unusable
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/27441 Title: Prevent extended periods of thrashing Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Status in “linux-source-2.6.15” package in Ubuntu: Invalid Status in “linux-source-2.6.22” package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: Two days ago I clicked a torrent link in Epiphany which for some reason made one of the desktop applications eat a lot of memory. So the machine suddenly froze and started trashing. I waited about 10 minutes, then gave up, pressed the power button and left. When I got back the next morning the machine had left swap hell, noticed the power button press and turned itself off. This made me think that perhaps it would be a good idea to somehow do something to prevent having the kernel spend more than 10 minutes with the desktop in a totally frozen state. IMHO freezing everything for more than a few seconds does not make any sense on a desktop machine. It might be enough to set the ulimit settings to something sensible, e.g. so that no application can eat more than 90% of the RAM or more RAM than there will still be say 100 MB available for the desktop on the machine. I'm experiencing this on a fully upgraded Breezy Badger, the kernel seems to be 2.6.12-10-686. I previously reported this as bug #27392 for the kernel, but the maintainer rejected the notion that the kernel could do anything about it and suggested I filed a new bug. And yes, I realise that in some cases a default process limit will be wrong. I'm not arguing that everyone should have these settings forced down their throats, I'm arguing that the defaults are wrong. It is a lot easier to remove a protection if you need it than it is to protect the system yourself, and most people probably don't run real memory hogs like scientific simulations. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/27441/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
