Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init

Szabolcs Szakacsits
2001-03-25T16:04:29Z

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
[ .... about non-overcommit .... ]
> > Nobody feels its very important because nobody has implemented it.

Enterprises use other systems because they have much better resource
management than Linux -- adding non-overcommit wouldn't help them much.
Desktop users, Linux newbies don't understand what's
eager/early/non-overcommit vs lazy/late/overcommit memory management
[just see these threads here if you aren't bored already enough ;)] and
even if they do at last they don't have the ability to implement it. And
between them, people are mostly fine with ulimit.

> Small correction - It was implemented, just not included in the standard
> kernel.

Please note, adding optional non-overcommit also wouldn't help much
without guaranteed/reserved resources [e.g. you are OOM -> appps, users
complain, admin login in and BANG OOM killer just killed one of the
jobs]. This was one of the reasons I made the reserved root memory
patch [this is also the way other OS'es do]. Now just the different
patches should be merged and write an OOM FAQ for users how to avoid,
control, etc it].

Szaka