Help: Runaway processes killing server...

[Tommy Reynolds]

Uttered Mauri Sahlberg <Mauri.Sahlberg at claymountain.com>, spake thus:

> Is my diagnosis of the out of memory correct one? What can I do to
> avoid this happening again? Any ideas?
>
> Sep  1 16:58:17 error kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 22076 (httpd).

The out-of-memory killer (OOM) runs because main memory and the swap
areas are temporarily out of space and the kernel needs some memory.
OOM searches for the largest resource consumer and in your case, that
happens to be httpd.  Note that httpd may not be the process causing
the shortage, it was just the biggest dog in town.

Try adding more swap space.  Check the web for how to use an ordinary
file for this if you don't have any free disk space.  Something like:

	# dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/lotsa/space bs=1M count=256
	# mkswap /path/to/lotsa/space
	# swapon /path/to/lotsa/space

may work for you.

HTH.