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Am I getting an OOM error and browser shutdown? Why?
  • CurtCurt January 2010
    Hello, everyone!

    I am trying -- really trying -- to make the transition from Windows to Linux. I have a few questions, and I'll try to isolate them into separate discussions.

    One problem that I have been having with SliTaz (and also with Tiny Core Linux, Puppy Linux, and Ubuntu) is that sometimes my browser window magically disappears. I think it is the "Out of Memory" problem and that Linux is completely out of memory and shuts down the browser in order to free some memory. I am not certain that that is the cause, but I think it is it. It commonly happens if I am browsing a complex webpage like Yahoo. It happens with many different versions of Linux. And it happens whether I boot from a LiveCD or install Linux to a hard drive.

    My computer has 384MB of RAM. Puppy Linux gives me a display of available RAM, and it is nearly always above 150MB free, and usually in the range of 180MB free.

    I have a new motherboard ready to install, and it has 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a quad core processor. Hopefully that will avoid the problem, but I would kind of like to fix the problem first. I would like to give this old motherboard/CPU/RAM to my son, and set up a SliTaz installation for him, if I can fix this frustrating problem.

    Does anyone have any ideas what I should do, or do you need more information? Thanks.
    Curt
  • seawolfseawolf January 2010
    HI Curt --

    You could try using MemTest, found on some bigger distro's boot-up screen, to test your 384MB memory. It may be that a portion of it is dodgy and getting it confused.

    I was doing some tests a while ago about memory usage and I found that 384MB was comfy for the default SliTaz use. Perhaps one of the other flavours might be better, they may perform better if you are just using a LiveCD. On disk, it won't matter, though.

    Also, FF is quite big, so using a smaller browser instead would give the pages more room in memory.

    HIH
  • CurtCurt January 2010
    Thanks, Seawolf.

    I set my BIOS to do a memory test, and that passed fine. Then I booted the Ubuntu 9.04CD and ran the memory test on it, and it passed fine, too.

    I have had the crashing browser with a variety of browsers, including Firefox on Ubuntu, Minefield on SliTaz, SeaMonkey on Puppy Linux, and several browsers on Tiny Core Linux.

    I wish that Linux gave me some type of warning to let me know that things are getting close to trouble, before it just starts shutting down programs. It often happens if I am browsing big complex web pages like Yahoo.

    What should I do next?
    Curt
  • seawolfseawolf January 2010
    I'm hardly an expert in debugging, but perhaps running your browser through a Terminal/command line may give some error? I suspect it may simply be a 'Segmentation Fault' which may not be of much help!

    It's that it occurs with a variety of browsers on a variety of platforms that gets me!

    Does anyone else have any ideas?
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