Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:56:00 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: "Andy Chittenden" <AChittenden@bluearc.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Out of Memory: Killed process 16498 (java).
Message-Id: <20060119005600.4e465e9d.akpm@osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <89E85E0168AD994693B574C80EDB9C2703555F85@uk-email.terastack.bluearc.com>
References: <89E85E0168AD994693B574C80EDB9C2703555F85@uk-email.terastack.bluearc.com>
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"Andy Chittenden" <AChittenden@bluearc.com> wrote:
>
> Why does running the following command cause processes to be killed:
> 
> 	dd if=/dev/zero of=/u/u1/andyc/tmpfile bs=1M count=8k
> 
> And I noticed one of my windows disappeared. Further investigation
> showed that was my terminator window (java based app: see
> http://software.jessies.org/terminator/). I found this in my syslog:
> 
> Jan 17 11:12:58 boco kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 16498 (java).
> 
> My hardware: amd64 based machine (ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard) with 4Gb
> of memory.
> My kernel: debian package linux-image-2.6.15-1-amd64-k8 package
> installed. IE its running 2.6.15 compiled for amd64.
> 
> This is repeatable. The above dd command also causes the machine to
> become very unresponsive (eg windows don't focus).

What type of filesytem is being written to?

Has someone tuned /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, or something else under
/proc/sys/vm?

It'd be useful to see the dmesg output from that oom event.
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