hi everyone,

I am running the latest version of kubuntu, and i was quite happy with it, but i seem to be having a problem with frequent runaway processes that no one else seems to be having and i was hoping someone could point me in the direction of solving it.

Most of the time the runaway processes are firefox-bin, sometimes (pretty infrequently) it is also ktorrent though. Does it have something to do with firefox extensions or plugins maybe? Or could it be something to do with how my system is configured? I haven't really fiddled with a lot of config files. It often happens when i switch to a virtual desktop, and then switch back to the one with firefox running in it.

Would it maybe help to change some settings with ulimit? Or to change the config file /etc/security/limits.conf to limit the amount of memory a process can use?

Are you using the runaway process applet in KDE? I don't recommend it if you are--it seems to be too sensative. If you want a good indication of how your processes are behaving, open a terminal and type in "ps aux"

I should have mentioned, yup i did try the process applet and found it too sensitive like you say, but also i've used ps aux and top, and firefox-bin always shows up as the cause of my crashes. Suddenly firefox-bin's cpu% goes up to the high 70s and 80s when a crash happens.

What version are you using?

Have you considered using the Mozilla browser or Konquerer instead of Firefox?

I have tried konqueror, but i really miss the session saver extension in firefox! But yup i could give the mozilla one a try as well.