Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 19 Aug 1998 20:10:09 +1000 | From | Dancer <> | Subject | Re: A true story of a crash. |
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Michael Driscoll wrote: > > >Well, this overcommitment is fine in some cases, and not in others. A > >kernel option that enables the no overcommit case would be nice for > >some people. > > > >The argument FOR overcommitting memory is: > > > > Almost nobody check the malloc return values. And if they do, all > > they do is bomb out with "out of memory". If you keep such a > > process, it might even run to completion. > > There are people out there who don't check the return of malloc()? Yuck. > I've *always* made it a habit to define my own xmalloc() which bombs with > an error messages on malloc() return of NULL. If there are people who > don't check the return of malloc(), then they get what's coming to then > (unpredictable crashes in heavy load, for one).
What? Not checking the pointer returned from malloc()? Blasphemy, at the very least(!).
I wrap almost all my malloc() calls up inside a subroutine that retries failed memory allocations (sleep 1 second, try again. Fail after 30 tries, then return NULL). I figure if I can't get memory _right_now_ I can wait a little while in case something terminates and releases some. But I still check the return value, even after all that...
It's surprising what you can run out of, and when.
D
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