Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264113AbTKZJ6k (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Nov 2003 04:58:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264118AbTKZJ6k (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Nov 2003 04:58:40 -0500 Received: from holomorphy.com ([199.26.172.102]:8893 "EHLO holomorphy") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264113AbTKZJ6j (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Nov 2003 04:58:39 -0500 Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 01:58:32 -0800 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Tim Connors Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: 2.2/2.4/2.6 VMs: do malloc() ever return NULL? Message-ID: <20031126095832.GI8039@holomorphy.com> Mail-Followup-To: William Lee Irwin III , Tim Connors , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <3FC358B5.3000501@softhome.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 864 Lines: 22 On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 06:31:37PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote: > Hence 2 should be the default. > 0 should be left for those poor fools who run closed source software, > and can't get their vendor to fix their bugs, so need to use some > kernel kludges (ie, overcommit) to get around it. This suggestion has two rather large problems: (a) Non-overcommit is a useful reliability feature: the VM guarantees (well, with 99% probability) it will not be forced to randomly kill processes, but instead return -ENOMEM when there isn't enough memory. (b) Once overcommit is enabled, it can't be reliably disabled. -- wli - 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/