Re: [cobalt-users] Running Low on Memory Messages

["WebMost" <dbugger@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ahoy Jim

I had the same situation on a RaQ3. After awhile, I would get mail from root
every morning advising me out of memory, with a flashing light on the GUI,
and top showing about 3 megs left. Typing M in top did not reveal any loose
processes. Of course, Cobalt was no help at all.

Then, one morning around 5:30, going through my reboot routine, I saw
backup.cgi had hung. This script is part of your wonderful Cobalt sauce. I
ran locate to find it, inserted an exit; statement right after the shebang
line, and the memory message never came back.

After one and one half months of your typical Cobalt tech support  (I wonder
sometimes what color is the moon on their planet) i.e. no returned calls,
ignored emails, no response from web form and the VAR getting promises which
were never carried out, I went on the warpath one week, and with the help of
the receptionist there, cornered Raymond Yip by phone in only the fourth day
of obnoxious effort. I told him backup.cgi appeared to be busted. After
that, it only took a week more for Cobalt to find the answer. Their answer?
"backup.cgi is busted."

It appears that the script inventories directories before archiving them.
Since I have 185,000 files on board, it just ran out of file handles. When
it ran out, it hung.

They have no better solution than to disable it as I describe. (They claimed
it would be fixed on the next update. I wonder whether there is a fix in
this number 3?)

Since then, the same thing has occurred to another RaQ3 co-located in the
same place.

So, if you are certain you do not have some self-propagating loop in a bit
of script, you might try to ham-string backup.cgi and see if that makes it
go away.

Aloha