On Sun, 18 Nov 2007, Daniel Jarboe wrote:
> On Nov 18, 2007 2:09 AM, Eben King <eben01@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> Hey folks. I got intrigued at my browser windows (and who knows what
>> else) disappearing two nights in a row, so I went looking. Turns out
>> this:
[OOM message]
>> and it goes on and on for 178298 lines, with the OOM-killer invoked 58
>> times by 8 different processes. All within 1 second after 4:00:15.
> Presumably during your backup the kernel allocates more of the free RAM for
> buffer/cache. Maybe that coupled with a "buggy" webpage with circular
> javascript/DOM references that hinders normal garbage collection is why
> firefox gets the axe?
FF really shouldn't be involved, as the backup reads /dev/hda not every file
in /dev/hadN.
> Still I wouldn't think think that Linux would steal so much for
> buffer/cache that it hurt the apps.
Oh, like that. Yeah, it didn't have a problem a month ago. Could be
though; maybe I have a buggy window open. However, I tend to think it's
related to dd's massively increasing memory use.
> You should really see better performance with dd rather than cat. Specify a
> dd blocksize that is a multiple of the device's blocksize and my guess is
> your backups will run faster and with less memory issues. It's what dd is
> designed to do... cat is too dumb to expect anything more than being
> functional.
I do... dd's block size varies from 1 KB to 512 MB in powers of two. Best
results (almost 40 MB/s) are 2^4 KB - 2^16 KB (16 KB - 64 MB).
> OOM-killer hits the non-root big-memory users first.
OK, good, then decreasing memory footprint and running things as root are
ways to increase my chances of surviving the memory crunch.
-- -eben QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOetP http://royalty.mine.nu:81 AQUARIUS: There's travel in your future when your tongue freezes to the back of a speeding bus. Fill the void in your pathetic life by playing Whack-a-Mole 17 hours a day. -- Weird Al, _Your Horoscope for Today_ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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