modifying memory usage of a program FProt 4481

Are you running a recent version of F-Prot? ISTR there being a problem with a version leaking memory a couple of years ago. (I switched to ClamAV though, so I'm not sure if it got fixed. I'm also not entirely sure it was F-Prot that had the problem in the first place.) With the buggy software, it didn't matter how much RAM you had; eventually the memory leak would cause all of it to be used.

Also, check with the makers of F-Prot for support. You should be enbreastled to support with your paid license.

As a quick fix, you could create a swap *file* to add extra swap space. Find a filesystem with more than 1GB free space and 'cd' to a convenient directory on it and execute (as root):

dd if=-dev-zero of=swapfile bs=1M count=1K mkswap swapfile swapon swapfile

I suspect that you'll still see the problem occur. It'll just take longer to fill the extra swap space. (Use the 'swapoff' command to disable the swap file, and then delete it when you're done with the test.) However, if it doesn't happen with the extra swap file, then you'll know that your machine was really just memory starved rather than there being a memory leak in F-Prot. Make the extra swap space permanent and-or add more RAM to the machine.