[Bug 27441] Re: Prevent extended periods of thrashing

[jk]

This happens to me quite frequently. When it does, it starts in the
morning at about 7 am, and I have no idea at all what's causing it. I
don't have any cronjobs scheduled for that time. It started years ago,
some time after I switched to using hard disk encryption. I've never
seen the problem before that.

Load goes up to 4 or 5, but when checking with "top", there is not one
single process in the list which uses more than a few percent of CPU
time. Most of the times "top" itself is the biggest CPU user. There has
never been anything remotely interesting in the log files.

The effects are like those of a fork bomb: In the beginning I can still
issue some commands, but pretty soon the machine becomes completely
unresponsive. It keeps answering to pings and all the routing seems to
work, but I don't even get to SSH login any more.

Sometimes the machine recovers after 30-60 minutes. When I need to use
it, I have to power it off with the power switch. Any way, afterwards it
works normally again, with no trace left of what had just happened.

This phenomenon has persisted through several reinstalls of the OS, so
I'm pretty sure it's not due to some rootkit infection. Also doesn't
seem directly related to any HDD, since this has happened with various
system drives I've had over the years.

-- 
Prevent extended periods of thrashing
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/27441
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