"T. Tilton" wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have a problem that I haven't seen mentioned here on linux-newbie or
> on any of the other lists so I am at a loss as to where to start to
> try and solve it. OK to the point.
>
> On any one day at any one time my system will go off on a disk
> access frenzy. It consumes all the CPU time and everything just
> comes to a stand still. I once sat around for an hour and thirty
> minutes and monitored this occurrence. At about every 6 minutes
> the drive accesses would lighten up enough that the clock display would
> update, the pointer would move (if the mouse had been moved),
> and maybe a screen would partially refresh but then the access frenzy
> would increase and everything else would go into a coma until the next
> 6 or so minute interval (the intervals are not always at 6 minutes.
> this morning they were around 4 minutes.) I have gone away for hours
> with this happening and come back to it still going.
>
> One thing that seems to be common to this is that I have left Netscape
> running for a long period of time without a modem connection
> established to my ISP (i.e. overnight or during the day.) I can not
> remember a time when Netscape was not left running and this problem
> occurred.
>
> I am running with: Debian 2.1 kernel 2.0.36
> Netscape Communicator version 4.7
> AfterStep1.7.142 patch level 17 window manager
> XFree86 3.3.2.3a-11
>
> So, if anyone has any idea or thoughts on this I would certainly
> appreciate you sharing them with me.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tracy Tilton
Hi Tracy, hi all,
that I find very interesting, as it happens to me as well. I seem to get
this when cron starts updatedb and I have a lot of Netscape windows
open. It seems to be relentless swapping, top shows my swap all but used
up in such a situation (before it hangs). Normally, i should have been
able to switch to a console with Ctrl-Alt-F1 through F6 and stop it from
there, but like you I find the machine not very responsive to keypresses
in such a situation. What's to do: more swap? Wasn't there something
about a memory leak in Netscape?
See you, Christoph
--
#include<stdio.h> /* SigMask 0.3 (sig.c) 19990429 PUBLIC DOMAIN "Compile
Me" */
int main(c,v)char *v;{return !c?putchar(*v-1)&&main(0,v+ /* Tweaks
welcomed. */
1):main(0,"Disjtupqi!Ibnnboo!=dibnnbooAfyufso/voj.vmn/ef?\v\1");} /*
build: cc -o sig sig.c */
