From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 25 11:14:11 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D2F2A16A4CE for ; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:14:11 +0000 (GMT) Received: from asmtp01.eresmas.com (asmtp01.eresmas.com [62.81.235.141]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 578DC43D3F for ; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:14:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ea1abz@wanadoo.es) Received: from [192.168.108.56] (helo=mx01.eresmas.com) by asmtp01.eresmas.com with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1D4dQ7-0003B3-23 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:14:07 +0100 Received: from [157.88.207.4] (helo=si04) by mx01.eresmas.com with asmtp (Exim 4.41) id 1D4dQ5-0002QW-C1 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:14:06 +0100 Message-ID: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es> From: "Ramiro Aceves" To: "freebsd-questions-en" Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:14:04 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) Subject: I killed my system with grep X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:14:12 -0000 Hello FreeBSD friends: I am running a FreeBSD 5.3 system with 64MB RAM and 150 MB swap. Yesterday I entered the command: # grep -R something / and after a while, my system did not respond. I do not remember the exact messages as I am on a winbugs at the University. The error was about swapping. I could switch among terminals but the system was dead. I needed to reboot. I rebooted and tried again watching "top" output and I could see as swap usage was incresing very quickly until it ran out of swap space and the swap pager failed. Was my sytem dead? or, is it possible to recover from that state without rebooting? How is it possible that a simple command like this could auto-kill the machine? What is the recomended fix for this?: a- Asigning more swap. b- Not executing that command anymore. Thank you very much for your advices and help. Ramiro