Re: cron job?

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

> 
> On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, Stefan wrote:
> First I would like to welcome you to the Independence Project. Your
> input is welcome and valued.
> > 
> > I had a problem alike once; it was a "find" job, ran by updatedb, by
> > cron by anacron etc. This was a little noisy, slowing down the system
> > etc., but it was harmless. What you say sounds harmful.
> >
> Part Two: After I managed to post to this list it started again and
> this time I could not manage to do much of anything. So got some much
> needed sleep and checked on it when I awoke. I awoke to find the system
> froze. Responding to no keyboard or mouse input. I had no choice but to
> power off the system and reboot. It recovered Okay and seems fine
> now. (sigh)
> > 
> > I dunno what you've got, but this is what I did to solve my "mysterious
> > process": I had a non-X command line interface open under the "root"
> > login. Every time the mysterious process started, I switched back to
> > this CLI immediately and typed in "ps ax >ps1.txt". This dumps the
> > process list to the textfile ps1.txt
> >
> I'll try to keep the 2nd session open to dump the file if needed, but
> the problem may be getting to it. Any commands are very slow to
> respond. Even switching to another virtual terminal is hard. I may keep
> the command typed in at the prompt so I will only need to switch to the
> 2nd session and hit [enter]. 
> > 
> > After having collected some textfiles, I compared them. There was one
> > "find" process that kept coming back. I knew "find" can be responsible
> > for such noise, so I guessed this was the process I was looking for.
> > With that info, some newsgroup people could help me on.
> >
> Thanks for the suggestion Stefan. I hope I get to use it next time!
> > 

Indy has an asynchronous cron ie one who does not need to keep the box
powered up 24 hours a day.  However updatedb by itself cannot produce
thse effects: it will slow your box due to the IO taking effect but
not in such proportions and it will not crash the box.

I would tend to think in netscape.  I have heard of such behaviour
with the version shipped in Indy 6.0 (who was the newets and greatest
at this time but netscape has been going from bad to worse).  I
presently use netscape 4.7

> > So please do this check first. Maybe you'll find that your computer is
> > defragmentating or whatever... First find the process, then we'll think
> > about where it came from.
> >
> Jean, dose Indy 0.8 have the ext2 defragmenter installed?
> >

No.

> --
> R.G. Mayhue
> rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com
> 

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org