Frenzying disk activity

[Nigel Wade]

Doru-Catalin Togea wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Alexander Apprich wrote:
> 
> 
>>If you know the time when this happens, check /var/log/messages to see
>>if the application(s) did some logging.
> 
> 
> These are the kernel messages from today's frenzy. There are similar
> records for the other days too:
> 
> Jul 27 19:34:13 localhost kernel: tg3: eth0: Link is down.
> Jul 28 05:51:41 localhost kernel: eth0: no IPv6 routers present
> Jul 28 06:53:34 localhost kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 3771
> (kdeinit).
> Jul 28 07:01:33 localhost kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 3784
> (kdeinit).
on for RX.
> 
> Hmm, it seems that memory is leaking somehow, somewhere. It happens after
> about 8 hours of inactivity.
> 

That, or some process is requesting a large amount of memory, or spawning 
multiple copies of itself, the total requirement being more than the 
available virtual memory of the system.

Monitor the process usage by displaying top in a shell window. Press M so 
that top is sorted according to memory usage. Watch the display and see if 
you can determine which process is growing.

Of couse, the memory problem may only be triggered by a particular event, so 
you might have a long wait...


-- 
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
             University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555