Re: Out Of Memory in v. 2.1

Bill Hawes (whawes@transmeta.com)
Sat, 03 Oct 1998 09:46:43 -0700


Roy Bixler wrote:

> I am running kernel 2.1.123 on a couple of workstations and find a
> reliable way to make the machines completely non-responsive is simply
> to run a buggy X application which tries to allocate more memory than
> is availabe. The only way out is a hard reset or a Alt-SysRq
> sequence. In ordinary circumstances, the memory and swap space on
> each machine is perfectly adequate and so I don't see "get more
> memory" as being a solution. I could just get rid of the buggy apps,
> but feel that the system ought to offer some protection against the
> Out Of Memory scenario (i.e. a program shouldn't be able to cause a
> system freeze simply by using too much memory.)

Can you send a pointer to a "buggy app" that illustrates the problem?

OOM killers are dangerous and I'd like to think we can find a better
solution.

Regards,
Bill

>

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