Quote from Roger Luethi <rl@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
On Wed, 26 May 2004 10:23:32 +0100, John Bradford wrote:
A run-away process on a server with too much swap can cause it to grind to
almost a complete halt, and become almost compltely unresponsive to remote
connections.
If the total amount of storage is just enough for the tasks the server is
expected to deal with, then a run-away process will likely be terminated
quickly stopping it from causing the machine to grind to a halt.
I'm not sure your optimism about the correct (run-away) process being
terminated is justified. Granted, there are definitely scenarios
where swapless operation is preferable, but in most circumstances --
especially workstations as the original poster described -- I'd rather
minimize the risk of losing data.
Well, I am basing this on experience. I know an ISP who had their main
customer webserver down for hours because of this kind of problem - the whole
thing created a lot of work and wasted a lot of time.
In this particular scenario, I think the run-away process was probably using
up almost two thirds of the total RAM, so I'm pretty confident the correct
process would have been terminated.