f8: PC dies while using firefox

[Les]

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 21:01 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > My most recent test showed no effect on swap (1G Ram in the machine and
> > 0 swap used).  But Acroread was consuming 100% of one processor.  I have
> 
> I wouldn't expect it to use more swap normally, bu it will only hand out
> memory if the swap is there in case it is needed (basically it'll only
> loan what is in the bank)
> 
> > also re-acquired a problem I had with early F7 where I am getting
> > frequent "Connection reset by remote host" messages and also lots of
> > interrupted page loads on firefox (probably related).
> 
> Years ago I replaced acroread with evince and my world has been happier
> since. An strace should show what acroread is doing 
> 
> The connection reset messages point to network problems and usually ones
> not at the Linux level but higher up  - eg two boxes with the same IP
> address.
> 
> Alan
New discovery on this one... I finally got an error message after I
locked down some ports and stuff.  The lockup is due to npviewer which
appears to be part of Adobe reader (Acroread).  I checked several
places, and our friend RJ has already submitted a bug report on it.  It
has been widely reported in other Linux distributions and I even saw a
couple of Windows references to npviewer.exe as a similar problem for
them.

So, I will table this research for now, and go after the cpu throttling
problem (should have done that first, but I discovered this first and I
like to chase things to the bitter end.)

	By the way, someone recommended using Evince instead of acroread.  That
is a good idea, but I don't see how to eliminate acroread from my
system.  So If anyone can point me to some instructions on how to remove
acroread and run evince, that would be appreciated.  I will probably be
off line while I vacuum my system and check the fans today, but back
tomorrow or next week.

Regards,
Les H