On Thursday 02 November 2017 01:10:08 Borden Rhodes wrote: > What kernel or other settings can I set to let me keep control of my > computer during a runaway process? Basically, how do I tell Linux to > keep just enough resources free so I can drop into a shell terminal > and figure out what's going wrong? > > In context, this evening my computer hung for 30 minutes. The hard > drive activity light went solid and it took about 10 minutes after > hitting CTRL + ALT + F1 for a bash shell to appear. It didn't matter > anyway, though, since the login process timed out if I attempted to > log in. > > Unfortunately, there's a 30-minute gap in journalctl, so I can forget > about figuring out what caused the hang or filing a bug report to the > maintainers' satisfaction. Therefore, I'm more interested in keeping > control of my computer in future. > > With thanks,
I haven't had that happen in ages. But because linux is a time sharing system, capable of running hundreds of tasks, 168 ATM, the first thing I start after a reboot is a root session of htop. I use a multiple tab shell on workspace 1, out of ten, with a tail -fn50 on the system log on the 2nd tab and a few tails on other background activities on more tabs of that shell. That way I can have a pretty close to realtime view of whats going on. And it doesn't normally have a huge lag in calling up that workspace and shell tab to see htop. Why a root session? Easy, so it has the rights to kill an errant process. I guess you could call it a philosophy to keep control of my machines. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
