Weird console problem in linux, usually right before OOM

Posted by Kevin Quinn on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Kevin Quinn
Published on 2011-06-23T05:18:33Z Indexed on 2011/06/23 8:23 UTC
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linux

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oom

So I've noticed this happen more than once.

If I remember correctly, this usually happens right before OOM, and/or kernel panic that if you type into a tty and then try to backspace it, the same characters are printed back in reverse.

This has been merely an interesting oddity to me in the past, but it happened again recently, and I've gotten more curious about what's actually causing that. (Is it sending the characters back to STD_OUT or something?)

Does anyone have any idea? I have a feeling the answer will be interesting.

Just so I'm clear, if you typed hello world, then tried to backspace it:

hello world..dlrow olleh

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