[Bug 27441] Re: Thrashing hell

[Ole Laursen]

** Description changed:

- Two days ago I clicked a torrent link in Epiphany which for some reason made one
- of the desktop applications eat a lot of memory. So the machine suddenly froze
- and started trashing. I waited about 10 minutes, then gave up, pressed the power
- button and left. When I got back the next morning the machine had left swap
- hell, noticed the power button press and turned itself off.
+ Two days ago I clicked a torrent link in Epiphany which for some reason
+ made one of the desktop applications eat a lot of memory. So the machine
+ suddenly froze and started trashing. I waited about 10 minutes, then
+ gave up, pressed the power button and left. When I got back the next
+ morning the machine had left swap hell, noticed the power button press
+ and turned itself off.
  
- This made me think that perhaps it would be a good idea to somehow do something
- to prevent having the kernel  spend more than 10 minutes with the desktop in a
- totally frozen state. IMHO freezing everything for more than a few seconds does
- not make any sense on a desktop machine. It might be enough to set the ulimit
- settings to something sensible, e.g. so that no application can eat more than
- 90% of the RAM or more RAM than there will still be say 100 MB available for the
- desktop on the machine.
+ This made me think that perhaps it would be a good idea to somehow do
+ something to prevent having the kernel  spend more than 10 minutes with
+ the desktop in a totally frozen state. IMHO freezing everything for more
+ than a few seconds does not make any sense on a desktop machine. It
+ might be enough to set the ulimit settings to something sensible, e.g.
+ so that no application can eat more than 90% of the RAM or more RAM than
+ there will still be say 100 MB available for the desktop on the machine.
  
- I'm experiencing this on a fully upgraded Breezy Badger, the kernel seems to be
- 2.6.12-10-686.
+ I'm experiencing this on a fully upgraded Breezy Badger, the kernel
+ seems to be 2.6.12-10-686.
  
- I previously reported this as bug #27392 for the kernel, but the maintainer
- rejected the notion that the kernel could do anything about it and suggested I
- filed a new bug. And yes, I realise that in some cases a default process limit
- will be wrong. I'm not arguing that everyone should have these settings forced
- down their throats, I'm arguing that the defaults are wrong. It is a lot easier
- to remove a protection if you need it than it is to protect the system yourself,
- and most people probably don't run real memory hogs like scientific simulations.
+ I previously reported this as bug #27392 for the kernel, but the
+ maintainer rejected the notion that the kernel could do anything about
+ it and suggested I filed a new bug. And yes, I realise that in some
+ cases a default process limit will be wrong. I'm not arguing that
+ everyone should have these settings forced down their throats, I'm
+ arguing that the defaults are wrong. It is a lot easier to remove a
+ protection if you need it than it is to protect the system yourself, and
+ most people probably don't run real memory hogs like scientific
+ simulations.

-- 
Thrashing hell
https://launchpad.net/bugs/27441