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Date:      Wed, 26 Mar 1997 16:09:05 +1030 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Cc:        drussell@saturn-tech.com, freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: SIGTERMs killing X
Message-ID:  <199703260539.QAA25237@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <199703260450.VAA27126@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Mar 25, 97 09:50:50 pm"

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Terry Lambert stands accused of saying:
> > in the last few days for no apparent reason.
> > 
> > Mar 24 12:22:23 586quick166 /kernel: pid 218 (XF86_SVGA), uid 0: exited on signal 6
> > Mar 25 11:27:22 586quick166 /kernel: pid 7136 (XF86_SVGA), uid 0: exited on signal 6
> > 
> > I can't for the life of me determine why it would have got an ABORT
> > signal....  Where would that be coming from?  The machine is just sitting
> > there idle (AFAIK, anyway... :)) and when I get home from work, for
> > example, it's no longer running X.  
> 
> It is because FreeBSD is overcommiting memory in it's VM system.
> 
> I am sorry for you that you got this error...
> 
> I am glad you got this error, because you are a real-world example
> of a need for a tunable which I have been lobbying for for four years.
> Now I have a sample case, and I am happy because I can flagellate
> the powers that be every time the topic comes up in the future.  8-).
>
>
> What it means is that your VM space for your process has been
> destroyed (you can see this by looking in /sys/kern/kern_exec.c).

Actually, in all my (few) years of abusing FreeBSD systems, I have never,
to my knowledge, received a SIGABRT for any reason other than memory
corruption, either through VM breakage or good old PC memory crap.

> 					Terry Lambert

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@gsoft.com.au             [[
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