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SubjectRe: Some questions about linux kernel.
On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:17:25AM -0600, Brian Hurt wrote:

> > Very few programs do controlled cleanup & exit today, those that do will do
> > so regardless. And if they run OOM (due to overcommitment that can't be
> > met, user quota, rlimit, system isn't overallocating and ran out, or
> > whatever), they won't be able to do anything much about it anyway.
>
> Most programs suck: they're written by programmers who, due to ignorance
> or lack of time, don't check for errors they should. The fact that brk(),
> sbrk(), and malloc() all can return errors is irrelevent- they aren't
> checked. Is this an excuse to not return an error value? Even something
> as simple as popping up a dialog box (which CAN be done- WindowMaker does
> it) instead of simply dying quietly (and leaving a core file behind- the
> default behavior of SIGSEGV) improves the user experience enormously.

It's not that trivial. At least certain versions of gimp will crash the
system _because_ they try to handle the out of resource case. When they
run out of disk space (for Gimp's userland swapping) Gimp will start
to pop up requester notifying the user. Unfortunatly the infinite
number of requesters will shoot down the system due to oom ...

Ralf

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