iB::Topic::Random crashes - require power off & reboot

	Damn Small Linux :: Damn Small Linux Board The DSL Forums

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » User Feedback » Random crashes - require power off & reboot

		Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
		Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic

Pages: (4) </ 1 [2] 3 4 >/

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Topic: Random crashes - require power off & reboot, usually when running Opera or Firefox

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

WDef

Group: Members
Posts: 798
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Aug. 28 2007,21:45

Florian -

Quote

entire system just freeze and I need to switch the machine off.

Does sound like you're running out of memory - if so increasing your swap may help.

How "modest" is your machine?

If you search the forum you will find some additional settings ("hacks") for Firefox' about:config that will limit the amount of memory FF can hog, also the number of pages it can cache in ram for back browsing (different to the disk cache), and some other things. I posted some and so did other people.

(NB: On a low spec machine you should probably not use the setting that starts loading pages before FF has finished composing them - it's resource intensive).

florian

Group: Members
Posts: 66
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Aug. 28 2007,22:34

I used a 32mb machine. I also have a 128mb P2 400Mhz on which I had not created a swap partition yet.

Thanks for the tips.
I'll search the forums for the firefox hacks.

yangmusa

Group: Members
Posts: 54
Joined: Aug. 2007

Posted: Aug. 28 2007,22:35

So I guess limiting cache wasn't the silver bullet on this one.. Firefox froze the system again, although this time it was up for over an hour first and I was in the process of opening Google Calendar.

I did a search on the forum for about:config but didn't find anything. I also searched for "firefox AND memory", but that didn't turn up anything either.

Grateful for any further ideas..
Magnus

WDef

Group: Members
Posts: 798
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Aug. 28 2007,22:46

http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act=ST;f=26;t=17285;hl=firefox+and+memory

BTW, the problem I was having in my post in that thread was fixed by using swap.

If on a low mem machine you should also search the forums for lots of hints - only use uci and unc extensions, use "minimal" theme, avoid java apps etc etc There have been some good threads on this.

I've never run dsl on low spec machines. You'd probably want to set browser.cache.memory.capacity lower than 16.

For 32MB RAM I'm not sure trying to run FF at all is a good idea?

yangmusa

Group: Members
Posts: 54
Joined: Aug. 2007

Posted: Aug. 28 2007,23:12

Quote (WDef @ Aug. 28 2007,15:46)

http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act=ST;f=26;t=17285;hl=firefox+and+memory

BTW, the problem I was having in my post in that thread was fixed by using swap.

Thanks for the link - I've tried that and will see how long I can run for now.. Actually, I guess I should reboot first, to make sure my changes are saved. Sigh.

My machine is 400MHz with 192mb physical ram, I didn't think it was so low end that I would run into any issues like this. I'm booting from a compact flash card, so I'm running in ram and don't want to enable cache.

19 replies since Aug. 28 2007,19:57

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Pages: (4) </ 1 [2] 3 4 >/

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » User Feedback » Random crashes - require power off & reboot