Linux System Freeze

Hey Philip.
Never messed around with Oracle Linux, basically a RHEL copy?

It sounds like a 'limits' or 'shared memory' problem. May need to manually set the hard and soft limits and/or tweak the SHM* settings?

I would consider 1Gb memory to be bare minimum for just about any operating system these days, real cheap, too. Increasing swap to compensate for lack of memory is a not the best approach. I would at least create the swap partition on a separate (and fast) drive. Once again, memory very cheap.

Using 'top' is just about the equivalent of your car's 'idiot lights', maybe a bit more informative, though. :hihi:
I would recommend using 'vmstat', 'iostat', or better yet ........ DSTAT!

Do you see any strange information in the 'dmesg' output?
LSOF can help you find out if incorrect libraries or plug-ins, etc. are being used.

Hope that helps.