Software watchdog

Michael Driscoll (fenris@frob.ml.org)
Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:34:24 -0700

> I've actually had some problems with the software watchdog:
> A user has a 150MB email, tries to open it in pine, pine goes hogwild
>with memory (swap), the computer slows to a crawl, the watchdog process
>doesn't get spawned fast enough, the computer resets.

I noticed this happening as well when I had a heavy user load going and
suddenly someone would start pulling a two meg mp3 file through the
httpd. My fix, of course, was to nice the watchdog -19 on startup. I
don't think it's happened again since I did that.

I note that this is also what kswapd does, though it only goes to -12
(no that was not a Spinal Tap reference). I scanned the watchdog docs
and nowhere does it suggest nice'ing the watchdog process. Any reason
why I shouldn't be?
Mike

-- 
---.-- Thinking of Maud you forget everything else.--More--
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