Hello list, I noticed a curious thing this evening - when I load the fetchmail man page in the Gnome help browser, it grabs all my memory - 256MB and ramps up swap usage until all that's gone too - another 256MB - previously none was used. CPU utilisation runs at about 75% on both cpus (SMP system) while this happens.
This all takes about 10 seconds on this system. It then frees all the memory, effectively flushing the cache and buffer memory, and displays the fetchmail man page ok. Apart from the cpus being tied up, there's no other obvious effects or consequences - nothing crashes (tried a kernel compile and running Netscape) and the system then seems fine, although swap usage doesn't return to 0MB immediately but seems to drop off over time, probably as the system moves stuff back into main memory. I just logged out and back in and that cleared most of the swap - only 9.5MB used now, down from 64MB after loading the man page several times, dropping to 29MB just before I logged out. There don't seem to be any spurious processes left hanging around. This happens on consecutive loads on this man page: start Gnome help, select Man Pages, select User Commands, select fetchmail - memory used. Use the Back button, select User Commands (again), select fetchmail - memory used. I've got three discrete 2.2.17 Potatos on this system, all with the same s/w installed - I've tried it on two of them with identical results - reboots make no difference. At least it shows I'm keeping them in step;) This doesn't happen if the fetchmail man page is loaded from a Gnome term: 'man fetchmail' dmesg gives: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for gnome-man2html... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for gnome-man2html... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for procmeter3... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for gnome-man2html... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for init... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for procmeter3... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for tasklist_applet... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for gnome-man2html... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for gnome-man2html... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for XF86_SVGA... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for sh... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for procmeter3... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for mount... VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for procmeter3... I'm getting really crappy conections at the moment so I've not been able to check the bug list, but if any one else gets the same behaviour I'll check it out and raise a bug if neccessary. LeeE -- http://www.spatial.freeserve.co.uk ...or something
