Re: [RFC] [PATCH] Cgroup based OOM killer controller

David Rientjes
2009-01-27T20:43:19Z

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, Evgeniy Polyakov wrote:

> Having some special application which will monitor /dev/mem_notify and
> kill processes based on its own hueristics is a good idea, but when it
> fails to do its work (or does not exist) system has to have ability to
> make a progress and invoke a main oom-killer.
>

Agreed, very similiar to the cgroup oom notifier patch that invokes the
oom killer if there are no attached tasks waiting to handle the situation.

In this case, it would be a configurable delay to allow userspace to act
in response to oom conditions before invoking the kernel oom killer. So
instead of thinking of this as a userspace replacement for the oom killer,
it simply preempts it if userspace can provide more memory, including the
possibility of killing tasks itself.