Message-ID: <3F614C1F.6010802@nortelnetworks.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 00:31:27 -0400
From: Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com>
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To: Rahul Karnik <rahul@genebrew.com>
Cc: rusty@linux.co.intel.com, riel@conectiva.com.br, linux-mm@kvack.org,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] Enabling other oom schemes
References: <200309120219.h8C2JANc004514@penguin.co.intel.com> <3F614912.3090801@genebrew.com>
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Rahul Karnik wrote:
> Rusty Lynch wrote:
> 
>> The patch below uses a notifier list for other components to register
>> to be called when an out of memory condition occurs.
> 
> 
> How does this interact with the overcommit handling? Doesn't strict 
> overcommit also not oom, but rather return a memory allocation error? 
> Could we not add another overcommit mode where oom conditions cause a 
> kernel panic?

If you have real, true strict overcommit, then it can cause you to have 
errors much earlier than expected.

Imagine a process that consumes 51% of memory.  With strict overcommit, 
that process cannot fork() since there is not enough memory.

Chris


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