Re: Out Of Memory in v. 2.1

Stefan Monnier (monnier+lists/linux/kernel/news/@TEQUILA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU)
05 Oct 1998 09:18:15 -0400

>>>>> "Feuer" == Feuer <feuer@his.com> writes:
> 1) if a process writes to memory when the memory isn't really there, the
> process is stopped by the scheduler, and cannot run again until it can get
> its memory.  Could be some security problems and/or deadlocks here.
> 2) when reach OOM, make a new swap file.  Other OS's use growable swap, why
> not linux?

It all depends on your `model of OOM': when does OOM happens in your world ?
There are usually two cases:
- either you are really using morer memory than you have.
- or a process has gone haywire (maybe deliberately to screw up the system).
In the second case, you definitely don't want to grow the swap since it just
postpones the problem.
In the first case, you might expect that someone can grow the swap manually.

In an earlier incarnation of this thread, I seem to remember someone
mentionning some smart behavior of MVS which looks at recent allocation
patterns and kills the faster-growing process.

Stefan

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