Memory problems

[Kim Scarborough]

I'm encountering problems because of a somewhat screwy configuration and was 
wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

I'm running 4.8-RELEASE-p1 on a machine with a 1200-mhz CPU and 64MB of RAM. 
The swap partition is 112 MB; I was running out of swap so I added a 256MB 
swapfile on /usr. Adding RAM, unfortunately, is not an option.

Because (I assume) of the really fast processor and low memory, the machine 
frequently goes bezerk. Basically when any process takes a lot of memory 
(like, say, running "grepmail" on several files, or running vim on a 10MB mail 
spool), the load suddenly shoots through the roof and the box becomes 
unresponsive until a reboot.

Anything I can do about this? I'd rather processes just die for a lack of 
memory than having the box go down anytime a user on there does something 
memory-intensive. What options do I have? And should I delete that extra swapfile?

-- 
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Kim Scarborough                                  http://www.unknown.nu/kim/
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"Football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and
committee meetings."
                                                                -George Will
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Now listening to: Aqua Regia - "Aqueous"
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