18 messages in com.perforce.perforce-user[p4] Perforce server lockup problem
FromSent OnAttachments
Erik Johnson07 Mar 2005 11:21 
Smith, Jeremy R (CACI)07 Mar 2005 23:17 
Ruaridh Hutchison08 Mar 2005 00:45 
Robert Cowham08 Mar 2005 03:30 
Bruce McPeek08 Mar 2005 09:03 
Erik Johnson08 Mar 2005 12:10 
DAVID Foglesong08 Mar 2005 12:21 
Ivey, William08 Mar 2005 12:51 
Craig Allsop13 Mar 2005 14:26 
Mats Nilsson13 Mar 2005 14:48 
Kenneth Olwing14 Mar 2005 01:15 
Arnt Gulbrandsen14 Mar 2005 02:07 
Kenneth Olwing14 Mar 2005 02:30 
Craig Allsop14 Mar 2005 14:26 
Erik Johnson15 Mar 2005 13:26 
Erik Johnson16 Mar 2005 10:09 
Stephen Vance16 Mar 2005 13:05 
Erik Johnson18 Mar 2005 13:52 
Subject:[p4] Perforce server lockup problem
From:Arnt Gulbrandsen (ar@gulbrandsen.priv.no)
Date:03/14/2005 02:07:50 AM
List:com.perforce.perforce-user

Kenneth Olwing writes:

About a year ago we tried upgrading our trusty old Linux to RH 9 Enterprise. It mostly worked, but also exhibited freezes (the 'press the powerbutton' kind). After a day I simply called it a failure and went back to the old server pending investigation.

It ended up being a memory overcommit situation that killed Linux.

Why did you allocate so much memory? Is/was your server seriously short of RAM, or was there some other serious problem?

The overcommit froze linux, but did not cause the problem - it simply is a particularly unpleasant consequence. When you do this

echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory

you're telling the kernel to pick some other unpleasant response to the problem.

Now, changed working style nicely kills the process if it runs away.

Usually. However, the kernel may instead choose to kill p4d and let your process run for another minute. The kernel tries to guess which process it's best to kill, but its guess isn't always correct.

I strongly suggest that you investigate what's eating your memory.

Arnt