Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 13 Apr 1996 10:12:42 -0400 | From | "Steven N. Hirsch" <> | Subject | Odd system crash |
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All,
Recalling a recent comment by Linus relative to handling of free-inode lists in the kernel, has something changed in 1.3.87? Last night, while deleting a large number of files (make clean in multiple directories), the system began complaining "virtual memory exhausted" - somewhat unlikely, as I have 32-Meg of ram and a 20-meg swap partition (whose disk never indicated any access). At this point, I could not run anything, e.g. 'ps' and 'top' segfaulted immediately and I could not even shutdown! Tellingly perhaps, one succesful invocation of 'df' appeared to indicate almost no increase in free disk space at a point where almost 20-megs had been deleted.
One red-button reset (with accompanying crossed fingers) later, the system came back up unscathed amd with the expected amount of free disk space. Nonetheless, this was a bit scary and very untypical of a rock-solid machine. Is it possible that a race condition or misdirected pointer reference exists within kernel code?
Any input appreciated!
- Steve -- ___________________________________________________________ |Steven N. Hirsch "Anything worth doing is worth | |University of Vermont overdoing.." - Hunter S. Thompson | |Computer Science / EE | ------------------------------------------------------------
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