From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <20010322200408.A5404@win.tue.nl> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:04:08 +0100 From: Guest section DW Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init References: <20010322124727.A5115@win.tue.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: ; from Rik van Riel on Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:01:43PM -0300 Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Rik van Riel Cc: Patrick O'Rourke , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:01:43PM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote: > > Last month I had a computer algebra process running for a week. > > Killed. But this computation was the only task this machine had. > > Its sole reason of existence. > > Too bad - zero information out of a week's computation. > > > > Clearly, Linux cannot be reliable if any process can be killed > > at any moment. I am not happy at all with my recent experiences. > > Note that the OOM killer in 2.4 won't kick in until your machine > is out of both memory and swap, see mm/oom_kill.c::out_of_memory(). Nevertheless, this process does malloc and malloc returns the requested memory. If a malloc fails the computer algebra process has the choice between various alternatives. Present a prompt, so that the user can examine variables and intermediate results, or request a dump to disk of the status of the computation. Or choose an alternative algorithm, at some other point of the space-time tradeoff curve. But no error return from malloc - just "Killed". Ach. Andries -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux.eu.org/Linux-MM/