>>> ok ok, but (I said I was a newbie :-)) ok the system may be
>>> thrashing, but shouldnt it just kill the proc responsible for it,
>>> instead of hang dead?
>> no, because if it can limp along, it might get better, in which case
>> killing something would have been premature.
> ok but (Im absolutely not complainig, just wondering :)) when it
> comes to a point such that nothing can be further accomplished,
> shouldnt BSD kill the process instead of freezing?

Yes.  I think the problem here is that what you think of as "freezing"
is actually not frozen, just thrashing - that it is making progress,
just very very slowly.  And if it's making progress, then as far as the
system's concerned, one of the active processes could finish and free
up resources.

> can a BSD system totally crash just to see if things get better for a
> process?

Sitting there thrashing is not "totally crash"ing.

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