Re: System lockups in linux prevent productive work.

In such a situation, as some other suggest, you need to figure out what it 
is that makes the system slow.

What i would recommened is this:

open a xterm (or a shell, or anything) and run top in it. let the system 
"lockup" and look at the output of top.

i suspect you'll get something like the "load" values going way high. Now, 
that would mean that your system is starving for resources. those 
resources can be many (just plain memory starving, file handle starving, 
IO, etc). In most of those cases, there are tweaks you can apply (/proc, 
or sysfs or whatever your distro uses)

Some distribution have tools to monitor the "health" of the system (such 
as "sar" and will give you series of stats for all those IOs.

Start with "top", then narrow down the problem. a "lock up" is not a 
problem, it's a symptom. fix the cause, not the symptom.. :)

Thanks,
Jok
---
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiantly talented fool...

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