Debian freezes

[Jelle De Loecker]

Stefan Monnier schreef:
>> "Jelle" == Jelle De Loecker <skerit-cB3pw4BdzzdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.or> svn or cvs, or when I'm trying to compile something directly on my freerunner, it would just lock up. Freeze completely.
>>     
> My guess is that it's just thrashing wildly.  The machine only
> has 128MB.  If you fill this memory with "large" processes (or with
> data on tmpfs filesystems), you can quickly get to the point where of
> those 128MB only a handful of pages are actually swappable, so the
> device ends up thrashing like mad.
>
> If you add a swap area (of say 128MB), you should see much better
> behavior since Linux will then be able to swap out pages of inactive
> processes (and files in tmpfs) so as to keep more RAM for useful stuff.
>
> Of course, if you really actively use more than 128MB at the same time,
> no amount of swap space will save you.
>
>         Stefan
>   
That's probably it.

I know I had some problems with tmpfs before, that's why I removed those 
"partitions" so that it would just use the space on my filesystem.

I'm actually using a µSD card of 2 GiB, with 1.3 GiB free, so I should 
have enough space free to create a swap partition. I'll give it a try 
tonight.

Thanks for your help!
Jelle De Loecker