Strange issue with LMDE and Skype
Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 7:50 am
I've recently had this very strange issue with Skype 2.2.0.35-1 in LMDE: all of a sudden Skype has caused a massive freeze of the whole system,along with a massive disk activity and total unresponsiveness to any command or input,including trying to restart from a console with Ctrl+Shift+F2 .
What exactly happened is that,whilst using various other programs (including Firefox with a youtube video playing),I've sent a chat message (the first time this happened) or just entered my password to login (the second time),which triggered this havoc on the system,provoking an instant frenetic disk activity and the impossibility to do anything,not even killing skype from a terminal or restart the system,as there was no response from either keyboard or mouse whilst this massive disk activity was going on,then when this freeze finally ended after maybe a couple of minutes,I've observed that actually a huge amount of swap had been used and the most relevant processes in top where related -if memory serves-to pulseaudio.
Before using Skype the total system load was very low and the amount of available memory pretty reasonable,so I'm totally sure that this is due to some Skype's fault or bug,also because no other program,even when using lots of them at the same time,has ever triggered such an issue.Does anyone have an idea of what may have happened? Is,whilst we are on it,a closed-source program that eventually causes such issues still safe to use in your opinion ?
What exactly happened is that,whilst using various other programs (including Firefox with a youtube video playing),I've sent a chat message (the first time this happened) or just entered my password to login (the second time),which triggered this havoc on the system,provoking an instant frenetic disk activity and the impossibility to do anything,not even killing skype from a terminal or restart the system,as there was no response from either keyboard or mouse whilst this massive disk activity was going on,then when this freeze finally ended after maybe a couple of minutes,I've observed that actually a huge amount of swap had been used and the most relevant processes in top where related -if memory serves-to pulseaudio.
Before using Skype the total system load was very low and the amount of available memory pretty reasonable,so I'm totally sure that this is due to some Skype's fault or bug,also because no other program,even when using lots of them at the same time,has ever triggered such an issue.Does anyone have an idea of what may have happened? Is,whilst we are on it,a closed-source program that eventually causes such issues still safe to use in your opinion ?