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Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 10:07:52 -0600 (CST)
From: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
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To: David John <davidjon@xenontk.org>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jonathan Miles <jon@cybus.co.uk>,
       penberg@cs.helsinki.fi
Subject: Re: OOM kernel behaviour
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On Tue, 1 Dec 2009, David John wrote:

> If I start something like Firefox now, the OOM killer is invoked and the
> machine is unusable until it completes. Sometimes the killer is invoked
> multiple times and the only way to make the PC usable again is
> to Ctrl-Alt-Bksp out of X. If RAM is low, why isn't the cache being
> reclaimed?
>
> The issue is sporadic but almost guaranteed if I leave the machine on
> for more than 18 hours. I initially thought some process was leaking
> memory but that seems unlikely.
>
> I can provide more info and do some testing (config etc.) if required.

Post the kernel log output please.