Linux running out of memory if networking routing not correct?

[David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks:

Has anyone ever encountered a problem with Linux (Fedora Core 4 in this
case, but I've seen it before also) where it will run out of memory and
swap space very very fast if networking routing is not setup correctly?

I just upgraded one of my servers from Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 4
and encountered a situation where the kswapd process seemed to be
running out of control.

Processes started getting killed due to out of memory conditions.

Frankly I'm stumped as to what the cause was.  It *SEEMS* to have
cleared up once I fixed the routing table (not sure how it got screwed
up either).

Anyways, here's a fragment of my syslog that covers the time period...
miniserv.pl was the first task to be killed due to out of memory.  It's
part of webmin.


Jun 27 20:37:59 gondor kernel: tg3: eth0: Link is up at 1000 Mbps, full
duplex.
Jun 27 20:37:59 gondor kernel: tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and
on for RX.
Jun 27 20:38:15 gondor ntpd[2174]: sendto(208.201.242.2): Network is
unreachable
Jun 27 20:38:17 gondor ntpd[2174]: sendto(64.109.43.141): Network is
unreachable
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x1d2
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Mem-info:
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: DMA per-cpu:
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 0 hot: low 2, high 6, batch 1
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 0 cold: low 0, high 2, batch 1
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 1 hot: low 2, high 6, batch 1
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 1 cold: low 0, high 2, batch 1
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Normal per-cpu:
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 0 hot: low 62, high 186, batch 31
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 0 cold: low 0, high 62, batch 31
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 1 hot: low 62, high 186, batch 31
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: cpu 1 cold: low 0, high 62, batch 31
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: HighMem per-cpu: empty
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel:
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Free pages:        6448kB (0kB HighMem)
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Active:91492 inactive:91442 dirty:0
writeback:0 unstable:0 free:1612 slab:2741 mapped:182057 pagetables:1793
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: DMA free:3040kB min:72kB low:88kB
high:108kB active:4696kB inactive:4580kB present:16384kB
pages_scanned:10370 all_unreclaimable? yes
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: lowmem_reserve[]: 0 742 742
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Normal free:3408kB min:3448kB low:4308kB
high:5172kB active:361272kB inactive:361188kB present:760368kB
pages_scanned:380646 all_unreclaimable? no
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:160kB
high:192kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB pages_scanned:0
all_unreclaimable? no
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: DMA: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB
1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 1*2048kB 0*4096kB = 3040kB
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 0*32kB 5*64kB
0*128kB 2*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 1*2048kB 0*4096kB = 3408kB
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: HighMem: empty
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Swap cache: add 592515, delete 592283,
find 85143/98898, race 0+55
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Free swap  = 0kB
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Total swap = 1558256kB
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Free swap:            0kB
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: 194188 pages of RAM
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: 0 pages of HIGHMEM
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: 2963 reserved pages
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: 8839 pages shared
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: 232 pages swap cached
Jun 27 20:39:32 gondor kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14955
(miniserv.pl).

Thanks!

david