Re: Overcomittable memory

From: David Whysong (dwhysong@physics.ucsb.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 21 2000 - 14:35:15 EST


On 21 Mar 2000, Rask Ingemann Lambertsen wrote:
>Den 20-Mar-00 21:04:35 skrev James Sutherland følgende om "Re: Overcomittable memory":
>> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 19:04:06 +0000, you wrote:
>
>>>I've seen this happen on several PCs, where all you do is malloc lots of
>>>memory and fill it. It'll hard lock after a while. Yes, it's a bug, but...
>
>> So fix the bug, don't change the system to avoid showing it!
>
> The system _is_ the bug. Please tell me what is wrong with allocating a
>piece of memory and using it? Nothing, of course. Yet Linux will currently
>nuke the process (or another completely unrelated process) for doing that.

No, the bug is that you tried to use more memory than your computer has.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Then don't do that."

You always accomplish more work with overcommit than without it.

The kernel policy for nuking processes when OOM is arguably broken, but
that's a separate issue.

Dave

David Whysong dwhysong@physics.ucsb.edu
Astrophysics graduate student University of California, Santa Barbara
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