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SubjectRe: Overcommitable memory??
On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, David Whysong wrote:
> On 15 Mar 2000, Rask Ingemann Lambertsen wrote:
> >Den 14-Mar-00 18:32:49 Rik van Riel wrote:
> >> On 13 Mar 2000, Rask Ingemann Lambertsen wrote:
>
> >> Not really. Without overcommit you may still have random program
> >> crashes and lost work...
> >
> > Yes, really. Maybe I should have said "additional lost work" instead
> >of just "lost work". Without overcommit, program crashes will only
> >happen due software bugs or hardware problems.
>
> Not true. With no overcommit, you can still crash programs due to OOM
> situations.

In fact, disabling overcommit totally with make OOM conditions MORE
frequent - some memory will be reserved, which would be free and usable
with overcommit enabled.

> >Lost work will only happen due to user errors, software bugs or hardware
> >problems.
>
> Not true.

In fact, the problem will get worse, not better.

> >If you overcommit memory, you can lose the file you were editing in
> >emacs simply because someone sent you an email and the MTA needed a bit
> >of memory to deliver it to you. Some people, myself included, just don't
> >find that acceptable at all.
>
> Memory overcommit is here to stay. As I recall, Linux already used
> overcommit and COW when I started using it at version 0.99pl13. Get used
> to it, or find another OS...

Yes. There may be a few, specialist applications where you truly want/need
overcommit disabled (embedded apps, perhaps?) - but for the desktop/server
market, overcommit is almost essential.


James.


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