Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
> >See Andrea's patch for something along those lines.
> >(but don't try it yet. Andrea is like me, you'll often have
>
> I am not like you since I hate to write docs.
>
> >to wait for the 2nd patch to get something actually working :)
>
> You should try it before speak. There' s no a second patch because the
> first one worked fine so far (I had also some nice report from people).
> And if I know there' s something wrong in one of my work _I_ declare it to
> the public _myself_ ASAP, BTW.
>
> And my patch fix _bugs_ in the current MM design of Linux 2.1 and has
> nothing to do with your OOM killer.
>
> If you want to use an OOM killer to choice which process to kill when the
> system is OOM you first need to know _when_ the system is OOM. Right now
> the kernel is not able to detect when the system is OOM after a page fault
> because __get_free_pages() never returns NULL _and_ because kswapd runs
> forever. My patch fix all such bugs. If you want to use your OOM killer
> you have simply to change the force_sig() in the swapin and anonymous page
> fault with something like your kill_the_best_process() (aka OOM_killer()).
>
> (Maybe you are running your oom killer in a ugly RT (yes must be RT to
> workaround the kswapd starvation _without_ my patch applyed) kernel daemon
> just to waste many good CPU cycles? Or you are killing process to early
> when really there' s still some memory (but yes, who cares, because you
> will never run your OOM killer in a 8mbyte 386, right?)?)
>
> And btw I don' t like an OOM killer that choice wich process to kill when
> the system is OOM. The only justice I can think is to kill _the_ current
> process: the process that has requested memory via a page fault if
> __get_free_pages() returned NULL (and if you are using a kernel daemon you
> can' t know which is that process btw).
I've got another idea. When OOM, root gets to pick a process, console if no
root logged in, user kill own processes if neither. etc.
>
>
> So my thought is that we/_I_ don' t need an OOM killer.
>
> And instead _you_ need my patch to have your OOM killer working.
>
> Please Rik, apply my patch to 2.1.124 _now_ and find a way to kill the
> machine or find a way where linux is not able to handle a heavy swapout
> and segfault even if there' s some swap avaible. Really really please
> (you are enabled also to use swapoff -a to do that ;-). I can' t.
>
> Let me know!
>
> Andrea[s] Arcangeli
-
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/