Re: suspend processes at load (was Re: a simple OOM ...)

[Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka@f-secure.com>]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Dave McCracken wrote:
> --On Wednesday, April 18, 2001 23:32:25 +0200 Szabolcs Szakacsits
> > How you want to avoid "deadlocks" when running processes have
> > dependencies on suspended processes?
> I think there's a semantic misunderstanding here.  If I understand Rik's
> proposal right, he's not talking about completely suspending a process ala
> SIGSTOP.  He's talking about removing it from the run queue for some small
> length of time (ie a few seconds, probably) during which all the other
> processes can make progress.

Yes, I also didn't mean deadlocks in its classical sense this is the
reason I put it in quote. The issue is the unexpected potentially huge
communication latencies between processes/threads or between user and
system. App developers do write code taking load/latency into account
but not in mind some of their processes/threads can get suspended for
indeterminated interval from time to time.

> This kind of suspension won't be noticeable to users/administrators
> or permanently block dependent processes.  In fact, it should make
> the system appear more responsive than one in a thrashing state.

With occasionally suspended X, sshd, etc, etc, etc ;)

	Szaka


--
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/