Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 12:22:34 +0100 From: Ramiro Aceves <ea1abz@wanadoo.es> To: freebsd-questions-en <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: I killed my system with grep Message-ID: <4221AD7A.7080203@wanadoo.es> In-Reply-To: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es> References: <003801c51b2b$1deecc60$04cf589d@simula.eis.uva.es>
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Ramiro Aceves wrote: > Hello FreeBSD friends: > > I am running a FreeBSD 5.3 system with 64MB RAM and 150 MB swap. > > Yesterday I entered the command: > > # grep -R something / > > and after a while, my system did not respond. I do not remember the exact > messages as I am on a winbugs at the University. The error was about > swapping. I could switch among terminals but the system was dead. I needed > to reboot. > > I rebooted and tried again watching "top" output and I could see as swap > usage was incresing very quickly until it ran out of swap space and the swap > pager failed. > > Was my sytem dead? or, is it possible to recover from that state without > rebooting? How is it possible that a simple command like this could > auto-kill the machine? > > What is the recomended fix for this?: > > a- Asigning more swap. > b- Not executing that command anymore. > > > Thank you very much for your advices and help. > > Ramiro Thanks all for your responses. I understand that I should avoid "greping" into /dev. I will do more accurate searchs into the directories. Ramiro.
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