Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:04:17 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:04:07 -0500 Received: from mailhost.tue.nl ([131.155.2.5]:3411 "EHLO mailhost.tue.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:03:52 -0500 Message-ID: <20010324010306.A6702@win.tue.nl> Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 01:03:06 +0100 From: Guest section DW To: "James A. Sutherland" Cc: Rik van Riel , "Patrick O'Rourke" , , Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init In-Reply-To: <20010322124727.A5115@win.tue.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93i In-Reply-To: ; from James A. Sutherland on Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:26:22PM +0000 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:26:22PM +0000, James A. Sutherland wrote: > > Clearly, Linux cannot be reliable if any process can be killed > > at any moment. > > What on earth did you expect to happen when the process exceeded the > machine's capabilities? Using more than all the resources fails. There > isn't an alternative. That is the wrong way to phrase these things. Large processes usually do not have a definite set of needed resources. They can use lots of memory for buffers and cache and hash and be a bit faster, or use much less and be a bit slower. Linux first promises a lot of memory, but then fails to deliver, without returning any error to the program. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/