Linux Out of memory issue due to perl

[Abhijeet_3]

I have a Linux 8 server , used for sendmail , openwebmail. It has perl5.8.0.

All of sudden last 2 days , server periodically not responding , i.e. not able to telnet, send / receive mails , but able to ping that server. We need to restart the server periodically due to this issue.

I checked top command , and found Perl5.8.0 utilising almost all memory and cpu.

I need your help.
Also any script , it will check and kill only perl5.8.0 process , use for cron.

Thx.

Abhijeet

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

There is no problem to kill perl processes ["killall perl"], but I recommend you to upgrade you linux box to supported linux version with updated webmail, etc.

RHEL4 is today's RH "commercial" linux, you can take RHEL free clone Pie Box or CentOS.

[dirk dierickx]

which perl script is it? what does it do? did you write it? can you post it here? does the script stay running all the time? perhaps you could run it every hour?
never seen perl act like this before, so it is difficult to say what is wrong with it just by saying it takes all memory.

[kcpant]

hi abhijeet,

as grik told you, you first find out which application is using perl, you might have some mailing related application which is using perl scripting for some purpose.

[NiCK_76]

Hi Abhijeet ,

What does it do? Which application start is? You should find out and disable it.

NiCK

[W Sanders_1]

Take care "slurping" big files into perl:

while () {
}

This will map the whole file into memory. If you need to read a very large file, you need to read / seek / etc.

If not that, then you'll need to debug your script.