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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 18:30:10 -0500
From: Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com>
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To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
CC: Stephen Clouse <stephenc@theiqgroup.com>,
        Guest section DW <dwguest@win.tue.nl>,
        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
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Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > > How do you return an out of memory error to a C program that is out of memory
> > > due to a stack growth fault. There is actually not a language construct for it
> >
> > Simple, you reclaim a few of those uptodate buffers.  My testing here has
> 
> If you have reclaimable buffers you are not out of memory. If oom is triggered
> in that state it is a bug. If you are complaining that the oom killer triggers
> at the wrong time then thats a completely unrelated issue.

Ummm, yeah, that would pretty much be the claim.  Real easy to reproduce too. 
Take your favorite machine with lots of RAM, run just a handful of startup
process and system daemons, then log in on a few terminals and do:

while true; do bonnie -s (1/2 ram); done

Pretty soon, system daemons will start to die.

-- 

 Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com>  http://people.redhat.com/dledford
      Please check my web site for aic7xxx updates/answers before
                      e-mailing me about problems
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