Swap going 100 mile an hour virtually freezing PC

[Rapael Morcha]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 01:40:36PM +1100, newcr wrote:
> Hi all
> Just wondering if anyone can tell me what is going on ....
>
> Swap going 100 mile an hour virtually freezing PC. It has been happening 

raphael at f9:[~] free -m; 
Take a note.

raphael at f9:[~] top;
Press SHIFT+< to get to "RES" (resident memory occupied by processes).

Note the RES memory usage and the PID of the processes using lot of RES memory and more importantly you believe is using up lot of swap. kill (Press k and type in the PID) the process. That'll free your swap space. File a bug report on that software at launchpad.

Morale - I believe there's not much you can do at this stage because if the process is leaking a lot memory and using up your swap space, all you can do is kill it and file a bug report. Then restart the process and hope for the best. In the meantime, if you've got older release of Ubuntu around, you could use that (have to restart and select appropriate one from the grub/lilo). "Hope for the best" in that department too. :-D

-- 
Cheers,
Raphael.