Date: 25 Feb 2005 08:56:24 -0500 From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org> To: "Ramiro Aceves" <ea1abz@wanadoo.es> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: I killed my system with grep Message-ID: <44r7j4vj3r.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es> References: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es>
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"Ramiro Aceves" <ea1abz@wanadoo.es> writes: > 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. c- Setting user limits in login.conf(5).
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