From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:12:09 -0400 From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: [RFC] oom notifications via /dev/oom_notify Message-ID: <20071030171209.0caae1d5@cuia.boston.redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <1193781568.8904.33.camel@dyn9047017100.beaverton.ibm.com> References: <20071030191827.GB31038@dmt> <1193781568.8904.33.camel@dyn9047017100.beaverton.ibm.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Badari Pulavarty Cc: Marcelo Tosatti , linux-mm , drepper@redhat.com, Andrew Morton , mbligh@mbligh.org, balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com List-ID: On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:59:28 -0800 Badari Pulavarty wrote: > Interesting.. Our database folks wanted some kind of notification when > there is memory pressure and we are about to kill the biggest consumer > (in most cases, the most useful application :(). What actually they > want is a way to get notified, so that they can shrink their memory > footprint in response. Just notifying before OOM may not help, since > they don't have time to react. How does this notification help ? Are > they supposed to monitor swapping activity and decide ? Marcelo's code monitors swapping activity and will let userspace programs (that poll/select the device node) know when they should shrink their memory footprint. This is not "OOM" in the sense of "no more memory or swap", but in the sense of "we're low on memory - if you don't free something we'll slow you down by swapping stuff". -- All Rights Reversed -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org