Re: tmpfs and the OOM killer

[Pedro <linux_user@izecksohn.com>]

On Wednesday 11 April 2007 19:39, Alan Cox wrote:
> >   2) How should an application be written to not be killed by OOM?
>
> OOM isn't an application matter. The kernel has to choose between
> allowing overcommit on the basis it might run out of memory and have to
> kill stuff, or that it won't in which case an applicatio which correctly
> handles malloc() and similar failures will not be killed (unless it is
> out of space on a stack grow which is a C language flaw as you can't
> catch that event in C)
>
> It's configured by /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
>
> 0 - try and spot obviously dumb allocations
> 1 - anything goes
> 2 - strictly control resource commit

  I deduce that a fail-safe application must scanf overcommit_memory, warn 
the user and waitpid.