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  • Thanks a lot, I'm almost sure this is the problem, as both the RAM and the swap were full prior to the server failure. (I can see on ovh's Manager's stats). And it's probably some of my crazy php scripts using a lot of memory. It does puzzle me however for a couple of reasons. (1) looks like the memory eaten up by php is not freed afterwards, but that wouldn't make sense; (2) in any case, I wouldn't expect a proper operating system to die completely just because of one (or even a few) processes using too much memory... I would expect it to
    – matteo
    Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 13:53
  • refuse to allocate memory to programs asking for it when there's not enough ram for the system to keep working correctly... I mean a buggy or even malicious program should never be able to destroy the whole system...
    – matteo
    Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 13:53
  • 3
    @matteo Linux has what it calls "overcommit": just because you malloc() 1GB of ram doesn't actually mean you're going to use it, so the memory manager keeps track of how much memory your program thinks it has and how much memory the program has actually used, and it actually works well, most of the time. At least, until more than one program actually wants to use all of the 1GB it thinks it has.
    – DerfK
    Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 14:13
  • no sign of oom-killer in either dmesg nor messages, btw - at least I grepped (case insensitive) for both oom and killer
    – matteo
    Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 16:34
  • 1
    @matteo I see no indication that this is an OOM issue. Typically, the OOM-killer will pick specific or processes that meet certain criteria, but it wouldn't always kill a daemon like ssh. This is definitely on the I/O side. You didn't explain your hardware situation/specs as I requested in my answer.
    – ewwhite
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:22