Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 22 Mar 2000 09:51:10 +0000 | From | Jon Milton <> | Subject | Re: Overcomittable memory |
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David Whysong wrote: > > > No, the bug is that you tried to use more memory than your computer has. >
I agree, there's nothing an OS can do to fix an under resourced system, so it's very questionable whether it's ok to kill processes on OOM.
Any mission critical application should be designed to cope with limited resources, those that aren't are just inherently unsafe.
If all apps were good like that then there would be no issue, but back in the real world ...... it happens. (A user may for example open multiple netscape sessions to maximise link utilisation)
There does not seem to be a solution that meets all needs. On the one hand a sys admin running a critical web server would probably want to trust Apache or whatever to use the available resources effectively, but trap any failure with full debug. ie killing processes on OOM is bad.
On the other hand, your single user linux on the desktop scenario, probably would not object to killing on OOM and possibly not even notice. The loss of performance when the apps start to swap is usually noticable, and cause individuals to moderate usage. Killing on OOM would be a failsafe.
I think what's needed is a "kill on OOM" daemon that's more programmable. Default on, but with facillity to disable. Even better, make certain users untouchable, so that apps which really are mission critical carry on running, possible at the expense of the dross.
Jon
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