strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

young lust · 2013-10-25 16:19:47

hi, guys.

i have commented out swap string in /etc/fstab. my lap has 1 gb ram.

when out of memory happens my os hangs up and it might be very difficult to kill -9 guilty process. at the same time HDD activity led lights up permanently - why that happens if swap is not used?

and i'm gonna tell: it's so hard to kill -9 ugly process (linux not responding on keyboard/mouse moving or clicking) that i wanna ask: where is widely known linux's stability? what i need to do to make my linux more responsable in such situations?

i hope i made myself clear.

thanks.

karol · 2013-10-25 16:23:54

Different issue, but similar course cause and effect: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/36574

Edit: typo.

Last edited by karol (2013-10-25 16:24:53)

stqn · 2013-10-25 17:12:53

My guess would be that systemd is detecting and enabling the swap partition by itself, but that’s only a guess. Try using swapoff -a, and/or maybe restore the swap line in fstab and add the noauto option to it (see man swapoff).

I have had a similar experience with swap under Linux a few years ago (totally unresponsive system), and have disabled swap entirely since then. (I recently added back a swap partition to be able to hibernate, but since I have 4 GB of RAM and have set swappiness to 1, it is not being used.)

young lust · 2013-10-26 10:32:55

karol wrote:

Different issue, but similar course cause and effect: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/36574

Edit: typo.

i've read and check out that guess, but i think that's not reason, because i haven't set up zswap and installed zram and so on...

stqn wrote:

My guess would be that systemd is detecting and enabling the swap partition by itself, but that’s only a guess. Try using swapoff -a, and/or maybe restore the swap line in fstab and add the noauto option to it (see man swapoff).
I have had a similar experience with swap under Linux a few years ago (totally unresponsive system), and have disabled swap entirely since then. (I recently added back a swap partition to be able to hibernate, but since I have 4 GB of RAM and have set swappiness to 1, it is not being used.)

i had tried to use swapoff before opened a new thread and it did not help me.

[az@laptop-syd ~]$ cat /proc/swaps
Filename Type Size Used Priority

[az@laptop-syd ~]$ dmesg | grep -i swap
[az@laptop-syd ~]$

any suggestions?

thanks

karol · 2013-10-26 10:39:08

I meant https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/36574

Additional comments about closing: This is what happens when you apply into heavy VM pressure and start using swap. Use a faster swap device or add more RAM if you want to avoid it.

If you're not using swap of any kind, it is a bit different story indeed.

Last edited by karol (2013-10-26 10:41:29)

young lust · 2013-10-26 10:46:15

karol wrote:

I meant https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/36574
Additional comments about closing: This is what happens when you apply into heavy VM pressure and start using swap. Use a faster swap device or add more RAM if you want to avoid it.
If you're not using swap of any kind, it is a bit different story indeed.

oh, i really misunderstood smthg.

i've got it.

but i'm just wondering why hdd led permanently lights up if swap is turned of?

kokoko3k · 2013-10-26 11:20:32

...probably because your buffers and caches are 0, and every bit needed from an application has to be read and wrote from/to the disk immediately.
The kernel will start kill processes as soon as the memory is really over.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-25 16:19:47

strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#2 2013-10-25 16:23:54

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#3 2013-10-25 17:12:53

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#4 2013-10-26 10:32:55

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#5 2013-10-26 10:39:08

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#6 2013-10-26 10:46:15

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

#7 2013-10-26 11:20:32

Re: strange behavior when out of memory takes place to be

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