Hi all,

my, well lets call my little homeserver (a fit-pc2), just nearly died on me. 
Commands like ps -aux wouldn't complete, they just stopped halfway through. 

i found this in my logs. 

Jul 30 20:50:21 home kernel: [118560.183051] swapper: page allocation failure. order:0, mode:0x4020
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183069] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.28-14-server #47-Ubuntu
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183079] Call Trace:
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183101]  [<c050b3b6>] ? printk+0x18/0x1a
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183119]  [<c019bdc7>] __alloc_pages_internal+0x357/0x450
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183136]  [<c01bf545>] alloc_slab_page+0x35/0x40
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183150]  [<c01bfc45>] new_slab+0x55/0x1e0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183164]  [<c01c0d85>] ? unfreeze_slab+0x75/0xb0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183177]  [<c01c0fdd>] __slab_alloc+0x1ad/0x260
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183190]  [<c01c1c49>] __kmalloc_track_caller+0xc9/0xf0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183205]  [<c04373d3>] ? __netdev_alloc_skb+0x23/0x50
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183218]  [<c04373d3>] ? __netdev_alloc_skb+0x23/0x50
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183231]  [<c04370e9>] __alloc_skb+0x49/0x100
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183243]  [<c04373d3>] __netdev_alloc_skb+0x23/0x50
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183277]  [<f80a931d>] rtl8169_rx_fill+0xad/0x1c0 [r8169]
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183300]  [<f80a97d0>] rtl8169_rx_interrupt+0x3a0/0x510 [r8169]
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183322]  [<f80acf6b>] rtl8169_poll+0x2b/0xd0 [r8169]
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183339]  [<c04402cd>] net_rx_action+0xed/0x1d0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183355]  [<c01467f7>] __do_softirq+0x97/0x170
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183368]  [<c014692d>] do_softirq+0x5d/0x60
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183381]  [<c0146aa5>] irq_exit+0x55/0x90
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183394]  [<c010c1c3>] do_IRQ+0x83/0xa0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183406]  [<c0146adc>] ? irq_exit+0x8c/0x90
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183420]  [<c011f8fb>] ? smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x5b/0x90
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183433]  [<c010ab13>] common_interrupt+0x23/0x28
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183447]  [<c0110a12>] ? mwait_idle+0x42/0x50
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183461]  [<c010884d>] cpu_idle+0x6d/0xd0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183473]  [<c04fb1de>] rest_init+0x4e/0x60
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183482] Mem-Info:
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183488] DMA per-cpu:
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183496] CPU    0: hi:    0, btch:   1 usd:   0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183505] CPU    1: hi:    0, btch:   1 usd:   0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183512] Normal per-cpu:
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183520] CPU    0: hi:  186, btch:  31 usd:  47
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183529] CPU    1: hi:  186, btch:  31 usd: 172
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183537] HighMem per-cpu:
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183545] CPU    0: hi:   42, btch:   7 usd:   5
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183553] CPU    1: hi:   42, btch:   7 usd:  36
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183568] Active_anon:6955 active_file:7893 inactive_anon:8289
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183574]  inactive_file:216232 unevictable:0 dirty:10363 writeback:0 unstable:0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183580]  free:1273 slab:10293 mapped:3030 pagetables:390 bounce:0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183597] DMA free:3468kB min:64kB low:80kB high:96kB active_anon:0kB inactive_anon:4kB active_file:96kB inactive_file:4428kB unevictable:0kB present:15772kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183612] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 865 990 990
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183635] Normal free:1348kB min:3728kB low:4660kB high:5592kB active_anon:15512kB inactive_anon:17104kB active_file:18548kB inactive_file:776004kB unevictable:0kB present:885944kB pages_scanned:64 all_unreclaimable? no
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183652] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 1005 1005
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183674] HighMem free:276kB min:128kB low:260kB high:396kB active_anon:12308kB inactive_anon:16048kB active_file:12928kB inactive_file:84496kB unevictable:0kB present:128720kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183690] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183703] DMA: 1*4kB 1*8kB 0*16kB 0*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 2*512kB 0*1024kB 1*2048kB 0*4096kB = 3468kB
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183738] Normal: 303*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 0*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 1340kB
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183772] HighMem: 1*4kB 0*8kB 5*16kB 4*32kB 1*64kB 0*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 276kB
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183806] 224849 total pagecache pages
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183814] 0 pages in swap cache
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183821] Swap cache stats: add 0, delete 0, find 0/0
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183829] Free swap  = 2977784kB
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.183835] Total swap = 2977784kB
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.192985] 259744 pages RAM
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.192985] 32434 pages HighMem
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.192985] 5468 pages reserved
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.192985] 235165 pages shared
Jul 30 20:50:22 home kernel: [118560.192985] 28236 pages non-shared

i also found this a little later (not sure if related or not)

Jul 30 21:41:06 home kernel: [121615.155626] *pdpt = 0000000035ca2001 *pde = 0000000000000000 
Jul 30 21:41:06 home kernel: [121615.155735] Dumping ftrace buffer:
Jul 30 21:41:06 home kernel: [121615.155773]    (ftrace buffer empty)
Jul 30 21:41:06 home kernel: [121615.155810] Modules linked in: appletalk ipt_LOG xt_multiport iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables input_polldev lp parport snd_hda_intel snd_pcm snd_timer snd psmouse i2c_isch pcspkr soundcore video serio_raw output sdhci_pci sdhci snd_page_alloc r8169 mii fbcon tileblit font bitblit softcursor

I hard rebooted the server since reboot -n wouldn't do anything. top showed an load average like 17 or more...

lspci
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)

uname -a
Linux Home 2.6.28-14-server #47-Ubuntu SMP Sat Jul 25 01:18:34 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux