I'm not really sure what is going on here, but it reminds me of a Windows bug...

So here's the setup:

I'm running RedHat Linux 9.0 Kernel 2.4.2 on a Pentium II 300 MhZ with 128 MB of ram, a crap video card (I think 4MB) - an STB Velocity 128 2D - with an 80GB Maxtor hard drive, a Kingwin hard drive sled, floppy drive, 56X CD-ROM, a broken Zip Drive (it is disconected too), sound card, Linksys network interface controller, standard stuff. It is a Dell Dimension XPS D300 if anyone cares.

So heres what happens:

I'm doin some word processing, PHP scripting, some type of text eiditing, or viewing large pictures on the web, andything that takes RAM (that is my assumption of course). All of a sudden, everything gets choppy, the mouse gets to where I move the mouse, and a minute later the cursor moves. Can't start anything, can't shut down anything, system resource monitor stops (when it says CPU is at 100%), and I am screwed. It hits the hard drive infinitely, and just sits there. Sounds like Windows, eh?

So here is my hypothesis:

Could it be possible that my RAM is bad? (This computer is five years old) And if so, why did the RAM pass the benchmark test on some diagnostic software I have, and why does this not occour on Windows 98?

My hypothesis is that it runs out of RAM (or thinks it does...), and then starts swapping a whole bunch of data to its swap partition... But it just infinitely does this (I have only actually tested it for around 30 minutes, then I hit the power).


Oh yea, and I forgot to mention that if you hit the power button and it comes back up, it fails the disk check, drops you to a shell, and then I execute the command:

shutdown -r now

It reboots, and then comes up fine. This same thing keeps reocurring, and I have no idea whats going on or how to fix it. Please help!!!!!

Too bad I'm a newbie at linux, otherwise I could fix it myself...

I'm thinking 2 things off hand, try a new kernel, or try a different video card, make that 3, check your bios for video options too. Good luck.

bests,
cg

Greetings,

Your problem is familiar. I can tell you exactly the problem based on my P-II 333 w/256Mb that I use as an X terminal on my main system (P-4, 1Gb, Mandrake 9.2). Have Mandrake 9.1 on the P-II. The problem is:

NOT ENOUGH JUICE

Previously had RH 5.1 on the P-II and it ran great, was my server. It would run anything fast and good. Upgraded to 9.1, everything seemed fine. Was still working on server, so I was using the P-II for everything. Sometimes it would just seem to hang. Hard disk light stayed on, mouse was ignored. Would get frustrated and cold boot.

One day, right after it hung, the phone rang - answered phone. Still talking, about ten minutes later, *blip* the screen changed, task completed and ready to go!!

You are correct in your surmise. I set up a test and found the memory would get exhuasted, when it would start to swap, it would peg the processor and come to a crawl. Next time yours locks, leave it - I'll bet in 10-20 minutes it will be at the next step like nothing ever happened!!

There's nothing that can be done. This is really a processor problem more than memory. With such a slow processor, and such a demanding kernel (comparatively) you are going to fly into the trees regularly.

If you don't have a newer box to use, all I can suggest is use BlackBox, or some other "light" interface, and stick to older, slimmer apps. Running OpenOffice, for example, will kill it every time.

Hope this helps.

Fudoki

These are typical symptoms of running out of memory. If you wait long enough some processes may crash or be terminated by the kernel and everything will return to normal.

The fix is to add enough swap space to prevent the system from running out of memory. You can temporarily add swap space by creating a large file and using it as a swap space. The mkswap man page has info on how to do this, but to illustrate: to create a 200MByte swap file, do the following as root:

Once you have more swap space than your maximum memory usage your system should no longer grind to a halt. But if you are short of memory, perfomance will still take a hit - but it may not be a large hit if you don't switch between applications too often - switching apps will force the kernel to move things in and out of swap space in order to run them.

After what I can get out of what you are writing it should be that you don't have enough memory. I had a similar problem, the mouse moved around and when I pressed a key it appeared after a while (a few minutes) I added some more RAM and the problem dissapered instantly.
Only a suggestion
Good luck

// Spoon