[buug] Netscape crashes

[Rick Moen]

Zeke, I forgot to mention one other aspect of Netscape 4.x for Linux:
Most, and possibly all, versions have memory leaks.  That is, as you
use them, over time, they allocate for themselves more and more 
system RAM.

Linux has very efficient swap-partition (and swapfile) management, 
but, if/when you utterly exhaust real + virtual memory, the Linux
kernel tends to crash hard.  This is expected behaviour, and is 
not catastropic under normal circumstances.  Ordinarily, a *ix user
will notice applications that start grabbing gobs of system memory,
because he runs the ps or top commands (or even the "free" command)
on occasion, and notices such things -- or he runs them subject to
the shell's "ulimit" built-in command.

Quoting from the manpage for "bash":

   Ulimit [...] Provides control over the resources available to
   the shell and to processes started by it, on systems that allow
   such control.

There are several relevant options to the ulimit command to specify
different aspects of memory allocation; I don't pretend to understand
them, but I haven't studied them.

In any event, my point is that the symptoms you describe are 
consistent with Netscape grabbing increasing amounts of RAM to the
point where the kernel dies.  You might check the "free" command
occasionally, to see if this candidate explanation holds water.

If it does, you could try using a different version of Netscape.
Or just shower good wishes on the Mozilla team.

-- 
Cheers,              "By reading this sentence, you agree to be bound by the 
Rick Moen             terms of the Internet Protocol, version 4, or, at your 
rick (at) linuxmafia.com   option, any later version."  -- Seth David Schoen