Re: [PLUG] what the hell is my computer doing?

[gunn@realmedia.com]

William Shank wrote:

> i'm running mandrake 8. i came in this morning and my harddrive is going
> nuts and the interface is completely unusable. it takes 5 minutes just to
> get the screen lock prompt to accept my password. i figure it was indexing
> the drive or something, but after a half hour it doesn't stop. i try to log
> in at another tty, but tire from waiting for the password prompt. also,
> there is an out of memory error and it says it killed a process (java -
> which is probably the Forte IDE i left running). i can't get the system to
> respond so i can see a process list. i finally try to reboot, (3 finger
> salute) but the system continues to hang attempting to shutdown. i finally
> have to reset it.
>
> when this has happened before, it usually slows the system down and i kill a
> cron process or two and it stops the indexing. but this time was very severe
> - perhaps due to limited memory available since i was running the java ide.
>
> can anyone tell me more about this process and how i can give it low
> priority so that it doesn't lock up my interface?
>
> thanks in advance for any help.
>
> -chris
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
> Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
> General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug

most probably swapping.

are you running sar? ( from the sysstat rpm or whatever...)
that gives a good view of what your machine is (has been) up to

or run a top sorted by memory usage.





______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug