Re: suspend processes at load (was Re: a simple OOM ...)

[Dave McCracken <dmc@austin.ibm.com>]

--On Wednesday, April 18, 2001 23:32:25 +0200 Szabolcs Szakacsits 
<szaka@f-secure.com> wrote:

> Sorry, your comment isn't convincing enough ;) Why do you think
> "arbitrarily" (decided exclusively by the kernel itself) suspending
> processes (that can be done in user space anyway) would help?
>
> Even if you block new process creation and memory allocations (that's
> also not nice since it can be done by resource limits) why you think
> situation will ever get better i.e. processes release memory?
>
> How you want to avoid "deadlocks" when running processes have
> dependencies on suspended processes?

I think there's a semantic misunderstanding here.  If I understand Rik's 
proposal right, he's not talking about completely suspending a process ala 
SIGSTOP.  He's talking about removing it from the run queue for some small 
length of time (ie a few seconds, probably) during which all the other 
processes can make progress.  This kind of suspension won't be noticeable 
to users/administrators or permanently block dependent processes.  In fact, 
it should make the system appear more responsive than one in a thrashing 
state.

Dave McCracken

======================================================================
Dave McCracken          IBM Linux Base Kernel Team      1-512-838-3059
dmc@austin.ibm.com                                      T/L   678-3059

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