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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 14:46:23 +0200 (CEST)
From: Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>
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To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
cc: Szakacsits Szabolcs <szaka@sienet.hu>, Robert Love <rml@tech9.net>,
       <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] strict VM overcommit
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On 21 Jul 2002, Alan Cox wrote:

> On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 10:10, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> > On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > Make swapoff -a return -ENOMEM
> > >
> > > I've not done this on the basis that this is root specific stupidity and
> > > generally shouldnt be protected against
> >
> > Recommended reading: MIT's Magazin of Innovation Technology Review,
> > August 2002 issue, cover story: Why Software Is So Bad?
> >
> > Next you might read: "... prominent, leading Linux kernel developer
> > publically labels users stupid instead of handling a special case
>
> I would suggest you do something quite different. Go and read what K&R
> had to say about the design of Unix. One of the design goals of Unix is
> that the system does not think it knows better than the administrator.
> That is one of the reasons unix works well and is so flexible.

The problem is that at the time K&R said this only real men (tm) were
administrators of UNIX systems. Nowadays clueless people like me are
administrators of their Linux system at home.  ;-)

With enough stupidity root can always trash his system but if as Robert
says the state of the system will be that "no allocations will succeed"
which seems to be a synonymous for "the system is practically dead" it is
IMHO a good idea to let "swapoff -a return -ENOMEM".

> Alan

cu
Adrian

-- 

You only think this is a free country. Like the US the UK spends a lot of
time explaining its a free country because its a police state.
								Alan Cox




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