On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 07:32:49AM +0000, Matthias Scheler wrote:
> In article <200403101116.40196.stephen@degler.net>,
> 	Stephen Degler <stephen@degler.net> writes:
> > Thanks for the suggestion, but no luck.  I just pop straight back to
> > the bios startup screen, with no output on the serial console.
> 
> <WILD GUESS>
> Could it be a too weak power supply? High CPU load under X11 (when your
> graphic cards is consuming more power) might be just enough to overload
> it causing the reset.
> </WILD GUESS>

I have a 550W PSU.  I done't believe I should have a problem
with that, and I *had*.  (only once so far though)

I think it has to do with running out of memory.  The "File"
memory stats in 'top' always goes up to a very high value (I'm
not sure what this number *means*, is it a buffer?) before
the pagedeamon starts stealing a lot of the CPU.

Most of the time, the pagedeamon manages to reclaim the buffered
memory after a brief "freeze".

What happens at the time of the reset is possibly that the
pagedeamon doesn't have time to reclaim the buffered memory,
maybe because it has to compete with too many other running
processes, and so the system runs out of memory and resets.

I have seen similar things in OpenBSD with mfs mounted /tmp that
got filled up, causing the system to completely lock up (but not
actually reset).

That's my wildly unproffesional guess.


Andreas


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Andreas Kähäri                      |(--)|
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