> ??? But this is known. If a process mallocs 1 Meg of memory, you
> commit (reserve) one meg of physical memory/swap. If a process
> does an exec,
> you 'commit' (reserve) exactly all of the COW pages. In the case
> of stack,
> the user or sysadmin sets a minimum stack to run with -- lets say 128K or
> 1M -- whichever. That is the amount reserved. Then when I write reliable
> process, that limits it's stack usage to < the reserved value --
> every call
> will return a reliable indicator "pass or fail". Never will I just be
> 'killed' because the system couldn't map memory it had already allocated
> to me.
Okay, so suppose you are using only memory you are allowed to use. Later
on, the system runs out of memory and swap. Your process touches one of its
pages that has been swapped out. The system must page in that page for you
in order for your process to continue running. The system, unfortunately,
cannot page in for your process since it can't page out because swap is
full. Please tell me what the system should do other than kill your process.
Don't forget, if you disable overcommit, you are likely to run out of
memory+swap much, MUCH sooner. You had better have a good way to deal with
that other than killing processes.
DS
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 31 2000 - 21:00:28 EST