Losing memory and Communicator 4.7

[Brian Wiens <wiensb@algonquinc.on.ca>]

"R.G. Mayhue" wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, Kevin wrote:
> >
> > The most likely culprit for this sintum is simply a runaway app
> > eating up all available memory ad forcing you to page heavily.
> >
> > Netscape, KFM and a few alpha quality apps have done this for me.
> >
> After some thought on the matter I believe you are right. That is
> exactly what I think is happening here. I've run find before and
> experienced some sluggishness, but never, never like this.
> 
> Afterward (if only X crashes) the system is useless until cleanly
> rebooted. Every action in X window afterward, such as opening and
> closing applications or just changing to another open window, the drive
> swaps very heavily. Almost as if something has consumed all the
> available memory, and I was using Netscape when it occurred both times.

I had a similar, but different, problem.  With my previous 0.8 install,
running as root (for installs or configuration changes), resulted,
without fail, in something eating up all the available H/D space.  I
would be able to work for a short period of time (15-30 min), then I
would be unable to save any work and would have to re-boot the machine. 
Running df showed / at 100% in use.  The first time this happened, the
re-boot seemed to clean up the drive and I got back the memory that I
should have had.  Second time, re-boot did no good.  In fact, I couldn't
even get Indy to start.  I ran PM 4.0, expanded my partition, started
again and worked okay for a little bit.  I cleaned out some tmp files
and other stuff that I didn't think I would need.  Ran root again to
finish the configuration changes and once again, 100% in use.  Ran
rescue, deleted some more stuff.  Ran df, had blocks free, but 100% in
use.  I never got any disk space back and had to re-install.  The
problem only showed up when logged in as root.  Running du didn't show
any overly large directories.  Any thoughts?  (I have had no problems
with the new install.)

> Is there a solution to this "runaway" app problem that you know of?
> 
> This has only happened twice now, and months apart, but I don't want
> it to happen again if there is a good solution available. BTW I just
> upgraded a little while back to Netscape 4.7. Good or bad?

Communicator 4.7 seems to be okay.  I have been using the Win and Linux
versions with no problems (even got the Calendar client working in an NT
environment!).  I do have one problem - because I am working with a dual
boot machine (but trying to stay in Linux) I have lots of legacy e-mail
in Netscape mail folders.  Messages received in Linux are
filed/summarized properly.  However, under Linux, Messenger shows the
Win *.snm files as additional folders and can't show properly any
message received when running Windows (splits between messages don't
seem to be picked up, all the titles appear in the summary window, but
reading the messages gives garbled info - body of message A appears
under the subject for message B, etc).  Any ideas? (Netscape doesn't
give any help on their web pages or in the help file for the Linux
version.)

Thanks,

Brian Wiens