Re: KVM and the OOM-Killer

[Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

* James Stevens <James.Stevens@jrcs.co.uk> [2010-05-14 09:10:19]:

> >	echo "-16">  /proc/<pid>/oom_adj
> 
> Thanks for that - yes, I know about "oom_adj", but it doesn't
> (totally) work. "udevd" has a default of "-17" and it got killed
> anyway.
> 
> Also, the only thing this server runs is VMs so if they can't be
> killed oom-killer will just run through the everything else
> (syslogd, sshd, klogd, udevd, hald, agetty etc) - so on balance its
> a case of which is worse?  Without those daemons the system can
> become inaccessible and could become unstable, so on balance it may
> be better to let it kill the VMs.
> 
> My current work-around is :-
> 
> sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>

Have you looked at memory cgroups and using that with limits with VMs? 

-- 
	Three Cheers,
	Balbir