Messages in this thread |  | | | From | "Chris Jones" <> | | Subject | RE: Memory hogs | | Date | Sat, 17 Jul 1999 01:07:02 +0100 |
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi
> > You're in a "we're completely out of memory" situation already, and > > having the application clean up may mean it wants to rewrite its > > config files. Requiring buffers and other resources. > > Once you're completely out of memory, you're too late. We > can simply start killing once we get very very near...
I noticed recent discussions about the reserved space on ext2 partitions that is emergency space for root to recover from something filling the disk (or defragging, depending on who you ask); Could a similar thing be done with RAM? The kernel holds back a few MB (configurable of course), then when you get into an OOM situation, your algorithm comes into effect and is able to tell a process to shut down and give it access to the emergency RAM incase it needs to allocate any further resources for config saving, etc.
RAM is cheap and I would prefer to sacrifice a few MB and have apps exit gracefully in an OOM situation than have the kernel start dumping processes and losing data all over the place.
Just an idea, I have roughly zero idea how implementable it is (just incase you were going to roast me for making a dumb, impossible to implement solution)
- --- Chris Jones Black-Sun Software chris@black-sun.co.uk www.black-sun.co.uk
"Linux is beating Windows" - David Cole, Microsoft Executive
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