f8: PC dies while using firefox

[Paul Johnson]

I have had this "system dies" symptom on several systems and traced
the problem back to an insufficiently big SWAP file, or the SWAP was
turned off entirely.

On a machine that has this problem, you run "top" and the swap line
will show 0 available.

I'm not denying other possible problems, but this one definitely did
cause system hangs here.  It is not unique to firefox, of course, but
firefox is one program that can trigger it because so many people
write crappy javascript and other ajax web programs that system
resources are strained.  If you leave firefox unattended whil it is
hooked on to some web page that is running crap on your system, well,
I guess you get what you deserve.



-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas