Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:04:27 +0000 (GMT) | From | James Sutherland <> | Subject | Re: Overcommitable memory?? |
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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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