how to protect my system from third party apps crashes

[Chris Whitehouse]

Sorry sent to OP only...

On 21/04/2011 11:21, Michael wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I'm having stability issues on my desktop system running FreeBSD 8.2-R
> on amd64. It happens quite often that some application (say web browser)
> goes nuts and totally locks-up my system.
>
> When it happens it looks like the application is frozen but I can't kill
> it. WCPU usage goes up rapidly and after a while system doesn't respond
> to anything than brutal hard reset.
>
> I guess it's not the system itself to blame, but it would be good if it
> could handle misbehaving programs. What I'm looking for is some kind of
> protection from system lock ups. I don't mind when the browser hangs,
> but I don't want it to kill my whole system.
> Any suggestions, hints, ideas please?
>
> I am aware that it's a workaround to the problem instead of a real
> solution, but that's what is needed.
>
> Michael
>
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I find sometimes viewing flash video with firefox causes the machine to 
appear to hang. In fact killing all instances of npviewer.bin frees 
everything up again. I usually have an xterm open just in case.

Don't have a problem with other apps so this might not be the solution 
for you.

My firefox is 3.6.10, flashplayer is linux-f10-flashplugin-10.1r85 and 
I'm on 8.1R x86

Chris