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SubjectRe: Overcommitable memory??

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Paul Jakma wrote:

> > And please explain why my simulation -- that may have started many weeks
> > (or months) ago -- should "just exit" because some random 5-minute old
> > Mathematica process went and allocated half a gigabyte of memory?
> >
>
> There's no easy answer to the OOM problem is there?

There are plenty of easy answers, they're just not answers that everyone
will be happy with. :)

It seems like the current solution is accepted because it doesn't
discriminate against any one purpose or user. I'm almost positive that the
person who wrote the code was pulling their hair out trying to figure
the best way to handle the condition, and just decided that the way to do
it best without receiving flak or alienating anyone is to start offing
processes at random.

FreeBSD has solved this problem by simply mandating "THIS IS WHAT WILL BE
DONE, YOU DEAL WITH IT IF IT MESSES YOU". Linux users are all
trying to make a case against one another. A lot of people have good
arguements for their side, some of which may conflict with others, but
there are no arguments that 100% of people can accept. I'm guessing that
if you presented everyone with 10 solutions, and told them to rate
them in order of preference, the random killing solution would have
the most points. :)

This is a decision that someone with recognized authority (for lack of a
better word) has to make after hearing all sides, and looking to implement
a solution that the most people can live with, leaving the select few who
will be affected negative, to try to somehow cope.

Now for my own bias: This issue could probably be reduced if you could
effectively limit a user to X megs of memory, whether they use it with
1 process at X megs or 50 processes at X/50 megs each. Therefore, if your
system has N users max, you could set aside N*X megs of VM.

The problem still exists though, but it can be more easily controlled by
those who care to address the problem themselves. :)

-MB


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