From: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org>
Organization: Blackfin uClinux org
To: david@lang.hm
Subject: Re: Out of memory management in embedded systems
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:25:47 -0400
User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5
Cc: "Bernd Eckenfels" <ecki@lina.inka.de>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <E1IcGOu-0007sH-00@calista.eckenfels.net> <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710010916570.20712@asgard.lang.hm>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710010916570.20712@asgard.lang.hm>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-Id: <200710011625.47466.rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 953
Lines: 20

On Mon 1 Oct 2007 12:27, david@lang.hm pondered:
> overcommit by default is optimistic that if the program requesting the 
> memory actually tries to use it there will be enough (both the fork-exec
> situation and the copy-on-write memory of real forks mean that the
> system ends up useing much less memory then is theoretically allocated).
> 
> switching it to be pessimistic (overcommit 2 IIRC) means that the OOM 
> handler will never kick in, but it means that programs will be told that
> there isn't any memory when there really is enough for the program to 
> work.

I have set it to 2, and still get the OOM if I malloc too much... I never get 
a null back from malloc, no matter what I try.

-Robin
-
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/