Is there a daemon to kill growing processes?

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

I have this problem with my Red Hat 7.3 server, where every now and then it 
gets into this mode where the hard drive is constantly active, the keyboard 
and mouse can take a minute or more to respond to each key press/mouse jerk.  
Sometimes it rights itself after an hour or so, sometimes I have to reboot.  
When in this state, networking works find- I can ping the box and it will 
masquerade to the internet as it is supposed to, but sshing to it hangs.

I have, on occassion, been able to catch a userland process taking all of the 
memory and cycles when the computer is in this state.  On occasion it has 
been the sync software for my PDA.

Is there a daemon to look for greedy processes and acting to either report 
them or kill them?  If not, I'll write one, but it needs to be very lean so 
it will work when the system is doing this.

Thanks.

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DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
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DKK D  David Kramer, Pangaean-American.
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