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[Launchpad Bug Tracker <1236467@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60
days.]

** Changed in: unity (Ubuntu)
       Status: Incomplete => Expired

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1236467

Title:
  A single misbehaving application using too much memory can hang the
  whole system into unrecoverable unresponsiveness, forcing you to turn
  power off

Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
  Expired

Bug description:
  It is too easy to put the whole system into an unusable state. Just try the following:
  - figure aout a webpage which is a little heavy to render in Google Chrome (just a page with a few hundred images will do)
  - open that same page in several tabs in Google Chrome, e.g. by ctrl+clicking the same link a few times.
  (I guess any other browser will do)

  Even though there is an issue in Chrome not detecting and preventing such a sudden explosion of memory usage (warning the user and letting him cancel or continue), the window manager MUST always maintain the responsiveness to mouse and keyboard. No matter how disastrous a sudden increase in cpu or memory consumption an application may have, it must never compromise the whole system stability.
  You should always be able to:
  - click on the offending application's window's close icon, so as to close the application (and if it doesn't respond, be prompted whether to kill it)
  - open a terminal to kill the offending process

  Not only I couldn't do any of those as the system would not respond to
  keyboard nor mouse (while it was probably swapping huge amounts of
  memory, which I infer from high disk activity and relatively low cpu
  activity) but I couldn't even  hit ctrl+alt+f1 to open a virtual
  terminal and kill some process, because most keystrokes wouldn't be
  caught.

  It can't be accepted that a single misbehaving application can put the
  whole system in such a state that the only thing you can do is a
  hardware power off.

  I don't know whether this is an issue in the kernel, X.org, the window
  manager, or all of them.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
  Package: unity 7.0.0daily13.06.19~13.04-0ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-31.46-generic 3.8.13.8
  Uname: Linux 3.8.0-31-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8.4
  Architecture: i386
  CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,decor,vpswitch,mousepoll,compiztoolbox,snap,commands,place,resize,session,regex,grid,wall,move,gnomecompat,imgpng,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell]
  Date: Mon Oct  7 18:41:10 2013
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-06-23 (1202 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
  MarkForUpload: True
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: unity
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-08-10 (58 days ago)

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