On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, David Whysong wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Helge Hafting wrote:
>
> >use with linux) You can run your machine that way though, take a look
> >at /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
>
> But "echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory" does not prevent memory
> overcommit in a global sense, it just prevents any one program from using
> more VM than is currently free. Since memory is still not allocated until
> pages are touched, you can still be heavily overcommitted.
>
> Dave
>
david, helge,
that sysctl does *not* turn off overcommit.
it does the opposite, it turns off bounds checking of memory allocs
completely. Read the docs for it properly.
Anyone reading this thread contemplating enabling that sysctl - think
again - it does the opposite to what you might think. Never ever set
that sysctl to > 0 unless you know exactly why you need it.
-paul jakma.
[and can we please stop arguing about overcommit/oom on l-k?]
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