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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 14:28:31 -0600
From: Stephen Clouse <stephenc@theiqgroup.com>
To: Guest section DW <dwguest@win.tue.nl>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>,
        "Patrick O'Rourke" <orourke@missioncriticallinux.com>,
        linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
Message-ID: <20010322142831.A929@owns.warpcore.org>
In-Reply-To: <3AB9313C.1020909@missioncriticallinux.com> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0103212047590.19934-100000@imladris.rielhome.conectiva> <20010322124727.A5115@win.tue.nl>
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In-Reply-To: <20010322124727.A5115@win.tue.nl>; from dwguest@win.tue.nl on Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:47:27PM +0100
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On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:47:27PM +0100, Guest section DW wrote:
> Last week I installed SuSE 7.1 somewhere.
> During the install: "VM: killing process rpm",
> leaving the installer rather confused.
> (An empty machine, 256MB, 144MB swap, I think 2.2.18.)
> 
> Last month I had a computer algebra process running for a week.
> Killed. But this computation was the only task this machine had.
> Its sole reason of existence.
> Too bad - zero information out of a week's computation.
> (I think 2.4.0.)
> 
> Clearly, Linux cannot be reliable if any process can be killed
> at any moment. I am not happy at all with my recent experiences.

Really the whole oom_kill process seems bass-ackwards to me.  I can't in my mind
logically justify annihilating large-VM processes that have been running for 
days or weeks instead of just returning ENOMEM to a process that just started 
up.

We run Oracle on a development box here, and it's always the first to get the
axe (non-root process using 70-80 MB VM).  Whenever someone's testing decides to 
run away with memory, I usually spend the rest of the day getting intimate with
the backup files, since SIGKILLing random Oracle processes, as you might have
guessed, has a tendency to rape the entire database.

It would be nice to give immunity to certain uids, or better yet, just turn the
damn thing off entirely.  I've already hacked that in...errr, out.

- -- 
Stephen Clouse <stephenc@theiqgroup.com>
Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead
The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/>

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