[CentOS] Had to POWER OFF CentOS 5.1!

Wed Jan 23 19:52:25 UTC 2008
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

Frank M. Ramaekers wrote:
> I was running a simple script and the system became unresponsive.  I
> went to the console and couldn't get it to respond, so I had to POWER
> OFF!   Ugh!
> 
> (Note: this script, get-backup, ran fine on a CentOS 4.5 system)
> 
> Looking through /var/log/messages, I see:
> 
> Jan 23 12:52:19 DoyleBrunson kernel: 249759 pages pagetables
> Jan 23 12:52:19 DoyleBrunson kernel: Out of memory: Killed process 2757
> (java).
> Jan 23 12:52:19 DoyleBrunson kernel: get-backup invoked oom-killer:

> Ideas as to a methodology to diagnose the problem?

You are out of RAM.  Did the other system have more RAM or swap 
available?  Also, if your backup is rsync based, it needs to put the 
entire directory listing for the transfer into memory before it starts 
with a certain amount needed per file.  Perhaps you can break the runs 
up into smaller sections.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com