From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756102Ab0AMWzF (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:55:05 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755986Ab0AMWzE (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:55:04 -0500 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:54257 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755951Ab0AMWzC (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:55:02 -0500 Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:54:03 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: Xiaotian Feng Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Michal Schmidt , David Howells , Serge Hallyn , Heiko Carstens , Frans Pop Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] accouting: account if a task was killed by OOM killer Message-Id: <20100113145403.e44a5490.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <1263192034-10898-1-git-send-email-dfeng@redhat.com> References: <1263192034-10898-1-git-send-email-dfeng@redhat.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.8 (GTK+ 2.12.9; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:40:34 +0800 Xiaotian Feng wrote: > This patch introduces a new accounting flag which is set when a task > was killed by OOM killer. taskstats can tell users when a job has been > killed by the oomkiller. > Why is this useful? I'd be looking for a description of some operational scenario where this feature is valuable to an operator? The description is incomplete. The patch also alters the contents of the BSD accounting records. That's a change to an ancient interface and needs a bit of exposure and thought. Is it good to put such a highly linux-specific and somewhat linux-version-specific field into such a venerable userspace interface? If we _do_ decide to change the BSD accounting records in this manner then presumably a manpage will need to be updated. A cc to linux-api@vger.kernel.org would be appropriate. But I'm not very convinced about this whole idea at present, personally. > include/linux/acct.h | 1 + > include/linux/taskstats.h | 2 +- > kernel/acct.c | 2 ++ > kernel/tsacct.c | 2 ++ I'm a bit surprised that getdelays.c doesn't print ac_flag.