System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

ShionjiYuuko · 2011-12-08 20:58:45

Hello, I found this recent problem since upgrading to kernel 3.0

It happened when I run Chromium browser with other memory-intensive applications. Sometimes the system randomly locks up, being not responding with harddisk indicator turned on. It happened for almost ten minutes or so. If I'm lucky enough, I can switch to tty* and usually killing Chromium from there. But on several occasion, I can't even call terminal emulator, switch to tty*, or if I've already in terminal, it simply doesn't respond to any commands (or responding only after several minutes).

Obviously Chromium causes the problem, since I've seen in htop that it eats 800MB of virtual memory on a typical browsing session. Yet another thing of my concern is how the OS seems not to be able to handle swapping well (or whatever it's doing when it's not responding, I'm sorry I don't have enough technical knowledge about the kernel, so I'm just guessing). I need suggestions on how to configure the system so that on situations where a full memory problem/swapping happens, I could at least get a control to the terminal and kill the offending process from there.

Thanks.

karol · 2011-12-08 21:04:08

If I'm out of RAM and need t use the HDD-based swap it's just like you say - even switching to a terminal emulator takes several seconds.

I think it's about high i/o, the system stalls similarly if I copy lots of data around.

ShionjiYuuko · 2011-12-08 21:09:11

My latest lock up was caused by Aegisub-2.1's Lua automation. I wonder if this has something to do with Lua or Aegisub instead.

willbprog127 · 2011-12-09 05:30:25

I don't know if it applies to your case, but I had something similar happen on my laptop. It seemed like it was Firefox eating all of my RAM, then later it appeared to be another program. It turns out it was a bad hard-disk. After installing a new hard-disk, the problems went away. I know you say this started with kernel 3.0, but it's possible something was written to a bad sector at that time and now is having trouble.

Is your hard-disk old? Does it have enough ventilation?

cloudberry · 2011-12-09 12:45:14

Same problem here. I don't think it started with kernel 3.0 but sometime during the past year. I wasn't using the affected machine as a desktop when it started so didn't notice and can't be sure of exact times. I had an early SSD in at the time which has since died but the problem persists with a hard disk in its place.

There seems to be no problem on my Eee which has the same amount (1GB) of memory. So I'm wondering if it's something to do with running 64-bit arch (or 64-bit chromium) on something with only 1GB memory? I agree it's caused by swapping. It locks up almost completely with HD thrashing for minutes at a time. top shows the CPU is mainly waiting for I/O.

I'm going to get a new PC soon with lots of RAM so shouldn't be a problem then, but would still like to know why it happens or if there's a fix.

Last edited by cloudberry (2011-12-09 12:57:15)

cloudberry · 2011-12-09 13:06:11

Edit: Ok, today it's just as bad or worse than before. Changing swappiness doesn't help. The problem still occurs with swap disabled.

Edit: The problem is also triggered by other programs, not just Chromium.

Last edited by cloudberry (2011-12-12 19:04:40)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-12-08 20:58:45

System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

#2 2011-12-08 21:04:08

Re: System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

#3 2011-12-08 21:09:11

Re: System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

#4 2011-12-09 05:30:25

Re: System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

#5 2011-12-09 12:45:14

Re: System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

#6 2011-12-09 13:06:11

Re: System Not Responding When Swapping Memory

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