From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 25 13:57:16 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 8C03C16A4CE for ; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:57:16 +0000 (GMT) Received: from hosea.tallye.com (joel.tallye.com [216.99.199.78]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F78E43D7B for ; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:57:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lorenl@alzatex.com) Received: from hosea.tallye.com (hosea.tallye.com [127.0.0.1]) by hosea.tallye.com (8.12.8/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j1PDv8qS019698 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Fri, 25 Feb 2005 05:57:09 -0800 Received: (from sttng359@localhost) by hosea.tallye.com (8.12.8/8.12.10/Submit) id j1PDv8JM019695; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 05:57:08 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: hosea.tallye.com: sttng359 set sender to lorenl@alzatex.com using -f Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 05:57:08 -0800 From: "Loren M. Lang" To: Ramiro Aceves Message-ID: <20050225135707.GC18789@alzatex.com> References: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-GPG-Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc X-GPG-Fingerprint: B3B9 D669 69C9 09EC 1BCD 835A FAF3 7A46 E4A3 280C cc: freebsd-questions-en Subject: Re: 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 13:57:16 -0000 On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:14:04PM +0100, Ramiro Aceves wrote: > 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 / Running a grep on an entire system as root is a bad idea. At least limit to certain filesystems. You probably hit a file under /dev/ and caused grep to hang. It's possible that as root, certain device files might hang the system, but nothing comes to mind at the moment unless /dev/io could do it. Also, think about what happens when grep hit's /dev/zero. It will never finish. > > 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Bluescreen. Bluescreen leads to downtime. Downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside. Powerful Unix is. Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc Fingerprint: B3B9 D669 69C9 09EC 1BCD 835A FAF3 7A46 E4A3 280C