>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? how can a 'simple' process crash everything? (really, Id like to
>understand)

no, because if it can limp along, it might get better, in which case
killing something would have been premature.

>**********WARNING*****************
>beware: stupid questions ahead :-)
>**********************************

beware: silly answers ahead  ;-)

>1) I tried mounting mfs on /tmp, but as I did so every application
>couldn open display :0 (!!), even if I unmounted the mfs, I had to
>reboot... 

mount the mfs on /tmp before you start x.

>2) the /tmp is "in use" it seems, since it is not empty... I tried
>making a new dir and mounting mfs on it, but the problem at point 1
>persisted

x puts things there, particularly its lock file, and the local domain
socket to which :0 refers.

>3) heres my /etc/fstab
>
>/dev/wd0a / ffs rw 1 1
>/dev/wd0b none swap sw 0 0
>/dev/wd0e /usr ffs rw 1 2

you should probably add a line that looks like

	swap /tmp mfs rw,-s=10m 0 0

so that your mfs gets mounted at boot.  that will alleviate a lot of
problems.

>but df output is:
>
>/dev/wd0a [blah blah blah...]
>/dev/wd0e [blah blah blah...]
>
>mount says:
>
>/dev/wd0a on / type ffs (local)
>/dev/wd0e on /usr type ffs (local)
>
>shouldnt df & mount report slice b? if not, IS the system effectively
>using slice b as swap space?

the swap partition doesn't get "mounted", per se, just "used".  pstat
-s will tell you to what you're swapping.  it will also tell you how
much has been allocated (even if it's not all being used).

hmm...i seem to have left out the silly answers and put in only
sensible ones.  drat.

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