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From: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>
To: Tim Connors <tconnors+linuxkernel1069831506@astro.swin.edu.au>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 2.2/2.4/2.6 VMs: do malloc() ever return NULL?
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 01:58:32 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20031126095832.GI8039@holomorphy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <slrn-0.9.7.4-9248-27858-200311261825-tc@hexane.ssi.swin.edu.au>

On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 06:31:37PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote:
> Hence 2 should be the default. 
> 0 should be left for those poor fools who run closed source software,
> and can't get their vendor to fix their bugs, so need to use some
> kernel kludges (ie, overcommit) to get around it.

This suggestion has two rather large problems:

(a) Non-overcommit is a useful reliability feature: the VM guarantees
	(well, with 99% probability) it will not be forced to randomly
	kill processes, but instead return -ENOMEM when there isn't
	enough memory.

(b) Once overcommit is enabled, it can't be reliably disabled.


-- wli

  reply	other threads:[~2003-11-26  9:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2003-11-25 13:27 2.2/2.4/2.6 VMs: do malloc() ever return NULL? Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-25 14:00 ` Arjan van de Ven
2003-11-25 16:58 ` Rik van Riel
2003-11-25 19:03   ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-25 19:24     ` Rik van Riel
2003-11-25 19:28     ` Chris Wright
2003-11-25 20:17 ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-11-25 23:17   ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-25 23:40     ` Oliver
2003-11-26 13:06     ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-11-26 13:20       ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-26 13:27         ` William Lee Irwin III
2003-11-26 14:33           ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-26 14:36             ` William Lee Irwin III
2003-11-26 13:49         ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-11-26 14:39           ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-26  7:31   ` Tim Connors
2003-11-26  9:58     ` William Lee Irwin III [this message]
     [not found] <VLAm.2g1.9@gated-at.bofh.it>
     [not found] ` <VM3n.3jY.9@gated-at.bofh.it>
2003-11-25 15:23   ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
     [not found] <VQJL.62Q.11@gated-at.bofh.it>
     [not found] ` <VR3c.6Ns.21@gated-at.bofh.it>
2003-11-26 10:30   ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau
2003-11-26 10:39     ` William Lee Irwin III
2003-11-26 12:14       ` Ihar 'Philips' Filipau

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