Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 6 Nov 2001 08:00:36 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 6 Nov 2001 08:00:27 -0500 Received: from perninha.conectiva.com.br ([200.250.58.156]:37130 "HELO perninha.conectiva.com.br") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Tue, 6 Nov 2001 08:00:10 -0500 Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 09:40:51 -0200 (BRST) From: Marcelo Tosatti To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Andrea Arcangeli , lkml Subject: out_of_memory() heuristic broken for different mem configurations Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi people, While testing 2.4.14 VM on the 16GB machine testbox I've been able to make the OOM killer not trigger correctly. The same usual workload: lots of fillmem processes. Looking at out_of_memory() I've found out that we will only kill a task if we happen to call out_of_memory() ten times in one second. That is completly variable on the system load: Taking into account that we have we lots of processes inside try_to_free_pages() and the LRU list is insanely HUGE (almost all pages were on the inactive list), I think this "ten times in one second" just does not work. Well, yes, its seems to be just a wrong magic number for this setup/workload. Linus, any suggestion to "fix" that ? /proc tunable (eeek) ? vmstat output: 13 7 2 3812816 2884 228 7648 42 28454 58 28430 295 1070 0 70 30 10 12 2 3880664 2640 204 7644 24 27754 28 27766 277 14650 0 92 8 17 5 1 3943404 2964 228 7656 22 31258 38 31276 303 10067 0 80 20 18 3 1 3998948 2708 220 7652 32 19434 46 19422 224 857 0 83 17 (end of swap) 23 1 1 4032960 2892 232 7648 16 24246 22 24252 235 997 0 72 28 22 1 1 4032960 2872 232 7648 0 0 0 0 106 13 0 99 0 23 0 2 4032960 2764 232 7648 0 0 0 0 116 11 0 100 0 21 0 1 4032960 2856 232 7648 0 0 0 0 122 45 0 100 0 21 0 1 4032960 2848 232 7648 0 0 0 0 117 21 0 100 0 21 0 1 4032960 2588 232 7648 38 0 38 0 118 41 0 100 0 21 0 1 4032960 2584 232 7648 0 0 0 0 123 10 0 100 0 - 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/