I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3, Amarok 1.4.9.1 and Text Editor. Gnome is my display manager. My machine is a P4 with 512MB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 5600. My network card is an Intel something or other.

I was editing several remote files over sftp using Text Editor, and I had several web pages open for previewing the edits. I had been working for at least 45 minutes when all of sudden I couldn't save my files in Text Editor anymore. I received some error saying Unknown Protocol Error (or something like that). I thought maybe my network connection timed out, so I reopened the remote folder and reopened the file I was working on. I'm not quite sure what happened from here, but all of sudden my system started to hang. It was still responding, but very slowly. The hard drive was spinning continuously. I tried to quit firefox, but it just hung up.

While all this was happening, Amarok began skipping through whatever song was playing. I was actually streaming music from Magnatune, at the time. I couldn't really do anything, so I tried to switch over to a console login. I finally got to login from the console, did a quick ps -ef to see what was eating up the CPU, but I didn't see anything which jumped out at me. I ended up killing firefox and amarok, then switched back to Gnome because the hard drive stopped spinning. After closing any remaing apps, I rebooted.

Now, I really have no clue as to which app caused the problem, but I did find this in my kern.log:

Code: Select all

Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.354850] amarokapp invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x1201d2, order=0, oomkilladj=0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.354868] Pid: 7186, comm: amarokapp Tainted: P        2.6.24-18-generic #1
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.354939]  [oom_kill_process+0x10a/0x120] oom_kill_process+0x10a/0x120
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355006]  [out_of_memory+0x167/0x1a0] out_of_memory+0x167/0x1a0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355066]  [ivtv:__alloc_pages+0x36c/0x3a0] __alloc_pages+0x36c/0x3a0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355151]  [__do_page_cache_readahead+0x11d/0x250] __do_page_cache_readahead+0x11d/0x250
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355158]  [sync_page+0x0/0x40] sync_page+0x0/0x40
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355235]  [do_page_cache_readahead+0x4c/0x70] do_page_cache_readahead+0x4c/0x70
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355265]  [filemap_fault+0x2f4/0x420] filemap_fault+0x2f4/0x420
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355348]  [__do_fault+0x61/0x420] __do_fault+0x61/0x420
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355365]  [do_futex+0x238/0xbb0] do_futex+0x238/0xbb0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355421]  [nvidia:kunmap_atomic+0x3d/0x2f30] kunmap_atomic+0x3d/0xb0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355449]  [handle_mm_fault+0x118/0x730] handle_mm_fault+0x118/0x730
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355474]  [hrtimer_interrupt+0x1b4/0x1f0] hrtimer_interrupt+0x1b4/0x1f0
Jun 17 21:10:34 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355485]  [hrtimer_wakeup+0x0/0x20] hrtimer_wakeup+0x0/0x20
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355563]  [do_page_fault+0x13f/0x730] do_page_fault+0x13f/0x730
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355597]  [hrtimer_get_res+0x0/0x30] hrtimer_get_res+0x0/0x30
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355613]  [snd_pcm:ktime_get_ts+0x1e/0x4f0] ktime_get_ts+0x1e/0x60
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355639]  [sys_clock_gettime+0x50/0xa0] sys_clock_gettime+0x50/0xa0
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355655]  [do_page_fault+0x0/0x730] do_page_fault+0x0/0x730
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355665]  [error_code+0x72/0x80] error_code+0x72/0x80
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355714]  [unix_dgram_recvmsg+0x50/0x2d0] unix_dgram_recvmsg+0x50/0x2d0
Jun 17 21:10:35 rgc-ubuntu-2006 kernel: [17106.355759]  =======================


Does anyone know if this had anything to do with what happened to my system? I just ran Amarok and killed it, but I didn't see a new instance of this info in kern.log.

Any help is appreciated.

This message says that your system ran out of memory (oom) and thus killed amarok.
I blieve the "Tainted" has nothing to do with Amarok, but just tries to state if your Kernel was tainted (e.g., whether you ran some non-GPL driver).

I am not even sure if Amarok is the cause for the out of memory condition. It is possible that the Kernel chose Amarok to be killed to free some memory for any reason, but I am no expert here.

it's also possible that your RAM is failing or corrupt, but I'd suspect out of memory first.

Buy some more RAM.

Thanks for the replies --- especially, "Buy some more RAM." 

My hunch is Firefox caused the out of memory problem. I think I'll hold off on the RAM.

Thanks, again.