From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 7 10:18:00 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8A104640 for ; Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:18:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx02.qsc.de (mx02.qsc.de [213.148.130.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37E84F43 for ; Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:18:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-109-47.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.109.47]) by mx02.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BA4C278B6; Thu, 7 Mar 2013 11:17:51 +0100 (CET) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id r27AHuEi087834; Thu, 7 Mar 2013 11:17:56 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2013 11:17:56 +0100 From: Polytropon To: mexas@bristol.ac.uk Subject: Re: process eating up all memory - what should happen next? Message-Id: <20130307111756.e4e31a9c.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <201303071001.r27A13A5000885@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> References: <201303071001.r27A13A5000885@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:18:00 -0000 On Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:01:03 GMT, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: > I have a process that eats up al memory, > in my case science/paraview if I try to > analyse a large model. What should FreeBSD > do when a process tries to use all RAM or more? In this case, the swap space would be used, until the system runs out of swap space. > I my case I get a complete freeze, can't even > login from the console, and requiring a cold > reboot. I guess this is not supposed to happen, > but what is supposed to happen in situations like this? A normal reboot (including a proper shutdown) should at least be possible. If the machine seems to freeze entirely, this simply looks wrong, so maybe it's more than just eating all the RAM? You could try to impose a resource limit, see "man limits" for details, so you could "trigger" the undesired behaviour while e. g. only 50% of the available RAM is being used by _that_ process (and therefor still leaving enough resources for other system and user processes). You could also monitor resource consumption with tools like top, htop, vmstat or systat in adjacent xterms while you run the test, seeing "trouble pile up"... -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...