Perl scripts CPU Hog and System Freeze

[dekela]

Hi

I am not sure if this is the right place to post it so let me know if it needs to be moved.

I have 2 machines:

1: Desktop running Fedora 16 x86-64
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 550 @ 3.20GHz
4GB RAM

2: MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.8 8GB RAM

I wrote a simple XML Parser script that past a heavy file (24MB)

When I execute it on Fedora it freezes up all my OS (Unable to even move the mouse) and takes forever to complete (I cant even kill the process)

When I run the same script on my MacBook which I though should be slower due to the spec it is lightning fast!
More then that, It dosent freezes my OS at all.

I dont think this is right and I believe my system is probably not optimized correctly.

Can you direct me what I need to check?
Do I need to recompile my kernel for better process management and memory management?

I must say that on both machines I am running a VirtualMachine with 1 GB of RAM allocation.

Thanks,
Dekel

[dekela]

Bumping to get attention

[stevea]

I'm NOT a perl developer at all, but you should try the obvious things.

1/ The perl command has a debug option have you tried it ?
2/ If you start the process in the background does it still lockup the syste m?
3/ Are you running the app with privilege ? (generally shouldn't).
4/ Are you exceeding the DRAM ? The 'free' command will show any swap used. Using swap means the system gets VERY slow and seems to lockup. Using swap in a virtualization can be even worse.