Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 21 Jul 2002 14:46:23 +0200 (CEST) | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] strict VM overcommit |
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On 21 Jul 2002, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 10:10, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote: > > On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Alan Cox wrote: > > > Make swapoff -a return -ENOMEM > > > > > > I've not done this on the basis that this is root specific stupidity and > > > generally shouldnt be protected against > > > > Recommended reading: MIT's Magazin of Innovation Technology Review, > > August 2002 issue, cover story: Why Software Is So Bad? > > > > Next you might read: "... prominent, leading Linux kernel developer > > publically labels users stupid instead of handling a special case > > I would suggest you do something quite different. Go and read what K&R > had to say about the design of Unix. One of the design goals of Unix is > that the system does not think it knows better than the administrator. > That is one of the reasons unix works well and is so flexible.
The problem is that at the time K&R said this only real men (tm) were administrators of UNIX systems. Nowadays clueless people like me are administrators of their Linux system at home. ;-)
With enough stupidity root can always trash his system but if as Robert says the state of the system will be that "no allocations will succeed" which seems to be a synonymous for "the system is practically dead" it is IMHO a good idea to let "swapoff -a return -ENOMEM".
> Alan
cu Adrian
--
You only think this is a free country. Like the US the UK spends a lot of time explaining its a free country because its a police state. Alan Cox
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