People,

OP again. I know not threaded, but so many replies to whom should I reply?

Thanks. Collectively you seem to have fixed it for me.

I can't be sure exactly which was the fix but I think the problem was sending the (large) log files to /tmp which it appears on my system to consume memory/swap.

I've also tried to reduce the log file size.

I can't be sure exactly what fixed it because a round trip involved rebooting the box which I can't do (I'm remote from it) so I tried all your suggestions in one go and got a successful result. Not very scientific I know.

Thanks again.

Geoff.