2001-04-13 23:35:07

by Mike A. Harris

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: OOM killer *WORKS* for a change!

I just ran netscape which for some reason or another went totally
whacky and gobbled RAM. It has done this before and made the box
totally unuseable in 2.2.17-2.2.19 befor the kernel killed 90% of
my running apps before getting the right one. This time, it
OOM'd and killed Netscape and I got control back instantly. This
is with 2.4.2. I hope this is a good sign!



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Mike A. Harris - Linux advocate - Free Software advocate
This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
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2001-04-14 06:03:34

by Jonathan Morton

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: OOM killer *WORKS* for a change!

>I just ran netscape which for some reason or another went totally
>whacky and gobbled RAM. It has done this before and made the box
>totally unuseable in 2.2.17-2.2.19 befor the kernel killed 90% of
>my running apps before getting the right one. This time, it
>OOM'd and killed Netscape and I got control back instantly. This
>is with 2.4.2. I hope this is a good sign!

Maybe, but 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 are still using the "old" killer algorithms
which can behave erratically. I haven't looked at 2.2.x OOM killers at
all, so I don't know how they compare. At some point in the near future, I
want to separate my patches out so they can receive individual attention
and hopefully get applied.

BTW, on this subject, if anyone sent me a mail which I haven't replied to,
I probably never got it due to e-mail problems with my ISP. If it's still
relevant, please resend.

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2001-04-17 12:13:44

by Szabolcs Szakacsits

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: OOM killer *WORKS* for a change!


On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> I just ran netscape which for some reason or another went totally
> whacky and gobbled RAM. It has done this before and made the box
> totally unuseable in 2.2.17-2.2.19 befor the kernel killed 90% of
> my running apps before getting the right one.

I ported the 2.4 OOM killer about half year ago to 2.2, available for
2.2.19 kernel at
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/reserved_root_memory.html

Note, since it's activated in page fault handler that is architecture
dependent, the current patch works only on x86 (the only one I could
test). If one is interested in other archs, let me know.

Szaka