From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:26:28 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:26:28 -0400 Received: from gateway-1237.mvista.com ([12.44.186.158]:31997 "EHLO hermes.mvista.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:24:49 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] strict VM overcommit From: Robert Love To: Adrian Bunk Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, alan@redhat.com In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.8 Date: 18 Jul 2002 15:27:26 -0700 Message-Id: <1027031246.1086.158.camel@sinai> Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 15:08, Adrian Bunk wrote: > Out of interest: > > How is assured that it's impossible to OOM when the amount of memory > shrinks? > > IOW: > - allocate very much memory > - "swapoff -a" Well, seriously: don't do that. But `swapoff' will not succeed if there is not enough swap or physical memory to move the pages to... if it does succeed, then there is enough storage elsewhere. At that point, you are not OOM but you may now have more address space allocated than the strict accounting would typically allow - thus no allocations will succeed so you should not be able to OOM. Robert Love