[Disclaimer: I'm no kernel hacker. I was an applications program for a dozen years or so, but that was on the "old" MacOS and such. I have a little knowledge of *nix systems, and no knowledge of kernels. It's possible that this question is not even a kernel problem, but it seems to be something that happening to the kernel task. I've posted this question a few different ways on the OSX server list, and really nobody had a good answer. Maybe someone here can give me a clue?} On my OS X v10.2.6 server, I run a "top" command every 30 minutes and log it to a file. I started doing this to debug a persistent crashing problem that always occurs with a memory allocation panic. By logging "top" output in this way, I've noticed that process 0, the kernel task, uses about .3MB more physical memory every time, i.e., every 30 minutes. Does anyone have any idea WHY this would be happening? Eventually it sucks up so much memory the machine crashes. I called Apple and the support tech said "reformat your disk and reinstall the OS". He said three general types of things could cause the problem: bad memory, network problems (how?) and a "corrupted" kernel (how and why?) I have run the HW diagnostic from Apple and from TechTools, and the memory chips show no problem. Is there any such thing as a virus that would do this on Darwin/OSX? I'm reluctant to format and reinstall because frankly, it's a pain in the neck. Interestingly, the virtual size of the process (VSIZE) does not necessarily grow as this problem occurs. It's the RSIZE, the physical memory used, that grows. for example: PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 8:01.21 26 0 - - - 38.6M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 8:15.29 26 0 - - - 38.8M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 8:29.52 26 0 - - - 39.1M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 8:44.24 26 0 - - - 39.4M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 8:59.16 26 0 - - - 39.6M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 9:28.26 26 0 - - - 39.8M 411M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 10:06.45 26 0 - - - 39.5M 410M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 10:47.56 26 0 - - - 39.7M 410M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 11:27.27 26 0 - - - 40.0M 410M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 12:07.59 26 0 - - - 40.2M 410M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 12:47.61 26 0 - - - 40.5M 409M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 13:26.85 26 0 - - - 40.7M 409M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 13:59.79 26 0 - - - 41.3M 409M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 14:35.32 26 0 - - - 41.5M 409M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 14:49.91 26 0 - - - 41.8M 409M 0 kernel_tas 0.0% 15:04.58 26 0 - - - 42.1M 409M (the lines above were grep'ed from a log file and each line records the status of the kermal task at 30 minute intervals, reported by "top") The machine is a "Macintosh G4 Server" i.e., a tower w/ dual 1GHz processors and the default 256 MB ram. I've been told that's too little ram, so I'm adding another 512MB, which I suppose is a "good thing". But really, the thing should not be crashing and unless I can find out why this task keeps growing, I assume that my additional ram will just mean that, instead of crashing about every 3 days, it crashes about every 9 days! Thomas L. Arnold Managing Partner, Summit Media Partners Visit our web site at http://www.summitmediapartners.com _______________________________________________ darwin-kernel mailing list | darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/darwin-kernel Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.