System crashing when swap hits 25%

[John Wendel]

Todd Denniston wrote:
> Simon Slater wrote, On 03/10/2008 06:37 PM:
>>     G'day all,
>>         This is an inconvenience that I would like to get to the 
>> bottom of.  I
>> have a PII 233MHz 512 MbRAM running FC6. All is fine until swap reaches
>> about 25% used then the system hangs.  It will run for days with the
>> swap at 10-15%.  My first thought was to run badblocks to see if that
>> was the problem, since it is an old drive, but couldn't find the swap
>> device with mount.
>>
> 
> Been there, done that.
> 
> WARNING: before using badblocks in full rw mode on swap space, remember 
> two things:
> 1) some how you would have to convince mkswap to retake what ever label 
> is being used in /etc/fstab, or you would need to use a new label/device 
> name in /etc/fstab.
> 2) don't be using it for swap while checking it. :)
> 
> /sbin/swapon -s
> will display which partitions/files are being used in the system for swap.
> /sbin/swapoff -a
> will turn swap off. probably should shut down any programs down that you 
> don't need so that you can get under 512MB, then badblocks (with full 
> read/write test and re-`mkswap -c` on it, or Use non-destructive 
> read-write mode) sounds like a reasonable thing.
> 
> If you find a single bad block, you should really be looking for new 
> hardware.
> I have done the thing where you partition around the bad blocks, but it 
> only buys you a little time.
> If I understand the man-page for mkswap the -c will print the bad block 
> locations, it says nothing of setting up swap to avoid them.
> 
>>     My questions are: what would cause this system to hang when the swap
>> file is used?; 
> 
> [from experience I know] Bad blocks in swap cause errors that look 
> _just_ like failing ram.  That is, programs just die, system locks up in 
> weird ways.
> 
>> where is the swap file?; 
> 
> Most times it is a swap partition, `/sbin/swapon -s` or `cat 
> /proc/swaps` will help here.
> 
>> if in the VG, how do I umount it
>> to run badblocks?  
> 
> /sbin/swapoff
> 
>> Here is some output that may be useful.
>>
>>     Thanks.
> 
> Good luck.
> 

You could make a new swap file ( man mkswap has all the details ) and 
use it while you are attempting the repair of the old swap space.

Good luck.

John