Re: Maximum number of processes in Linux

From: Alistair John Strachan
Date: Wed Aug 16 2006 - 07:56:45 EST


On Wednesday 16 August 2006 11:01, Helge Hafting wrote:
> linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote:
> > Yep....
> >
> > #include <stdio.h>
> > #include <signal.h>
> > int main()
> > {
> > unsigned long i;
> > for(i = 0; ; i++)
> > {
> > switch(fork())
> > {
> > case 0: // kid
> > pause();
> > break;
> > case -1: // Failed
> > printf("%lu\n", i);
> > kill(0, SIGTERM);
> > exit(0);
> > default:
> > break;
> > }
> > }
> > return 0;
> > }
> >
> > Shows a consistent 6140.
>
> Doesn't work here. Without ulimit, I wasn't surprised
> about the resulting OOM mess.
>
> Problem was, it never stopped. I expected OOM to kill
> this program, and quite possibly lots of other running programs
> as well. What I got, was ever-rolling OOM messages
> with stack traces inbetween.
> 2.6.18-rc4-mm1 never recovered and had to be killed by sysrq.

It took 4.5 minutes to recover on my X2 3800+, 2GB RAM, 512MB swap, when I
tried without ulimit on 2.6.18-rc4. However, the OOM killer did call all of
the offending processes and I was able to use the machine for many hours
afterwards. The VM didn't even mind after a swapoff -a.

Maybe an -mm patch?

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

Final year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.
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