Re: Out of memory?

[David Ford <david _at_ kalifornia.com>]

Michael Rothwell wrote:

> Killing, for instance, kswapd. On my machine last week, the kernel
> started killing processes. Its first choice was kswapd, and then it went
> on to my window manager and about 10 other programs.
>
> It was pretty retarded.

I agree, killing init, kernel threads, etc, should be the -last- possible choice
of kills.  For some reason the OOM killer never seems to get the process that's
currently sucking in memory, it -always- gets the innocent guys and on X
machines invariably kills it thus rendering the machine unusable as the video
isn't recoverable.


> I know Linux overcommits memory and has no way of knowing who the real
> overallocator culprit is, but wouldn't some resource accounting be good?
> Or perhaps a tunable or compile-time option to turn off overcommits?

Yes, it would be good.

-d


--
"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an
eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was
'committed'."


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