Kernel 2.4.18 and strange OOM Killer behaveness

[Marc-Christian Petersen <mcp@linux-systeme.de>]

Hi there,

i just opened an 800mb movie file with pico/nano, waited for the OOM, and here 
it is, have a look:

Apr 26 16:10:45 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 19789 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:46 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 27828 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:48 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14554 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:50 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 19893 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:52 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 32036 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:54 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 8370 (apache).
Apr 26 16:10:56 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 680 (mysqld).
Apr 26 16:10:56 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 7638 (mysqld).
Apr 26 16:10:56 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 26780 (mysqld).
Apr 26 16:10:56 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 26038 (mysqld).
Apr 26 16:11:01 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 3914 (pico).
Apr 26 16:11:01 codeman kernel: VM: killing process pico
Apr 26 16:11:04 codeman kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 20471 (squid).

So, you guess, apache, mysqld, squid and the causer pico are killed, but NO, 
ONLY, and i mean ONLY pico was killed, all the other Processes listed above 
are running fine, accepting connections, short: works fine!!
And yes, its reproduceable !!

The above is a kernel without rmap!

I also tried this with rmap enabled kernel, no OOM Messages appears, but the 
system freezes. It does NOT accept any input on keyboard, mouse or via the 
network (e.g ping, traceroute, telnet to smtp port etc.). Also, if the system 
does not accept any input, the harddisk is doing something, i've waited ~ 45 
minutes, system was still not accepting anything, harddisk was doing 
anything. This was rmap12h with 2.4.18.

Kinda strange, isn't it?! :-)

I like it, cause only the causer get killed, but why those syslog messages?!
Syslogd lies like a trooper ;)

-- 
Kind regards
	Marc-Christian Petersen

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wolk

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