Ideas for the oom problem

james
2001-03-28T00:30:04Z

Hi Kernel Guru's

Here are my ideas on how too deal with the oom situation, most of these
should be thought of stuff to do in 2.5.x kernels, because it touches a lot
of kernel path ways, with possible back porting
once it is tested.

I propose a three prong approach too this problem

Prong 1: WHAT TOO KILL

a. don't kill any task with a uid < 100

b. if uid between 100 to 500 or CAP-SYS equivalent enabled
set it too a lower priority, so if it is at fault it will happen slower
giving more time before the system collapses

c. if a task is nice'd then immediately put the task too sleep, and schedule
all code / data too be swapped out, or thrown away as appropiate. do not
reschedule the task too continue until memory is available

d. kill any normal user interactive tasks that is started during a memory
crisis.

Prong 2 WHAT TOO DO ABOUT STABILIZING THE SYSTEM

allocate a pool of memory at system start up that is too be released to the
memory pool when the system is in a memory crisis. This will reduce system
swapping, and allow the system too stablize slightly

report any task asking for large pool of memory while the system is in
oom crisis. if uid > 500 and was started from an interactive shell it should
be killed.

when the crisis is ended, re-adquire the memory pool for later usage.

Prong 3 providing information about oom crisis too user land

create /proc/vm/oom_crisis this would be readonly file owned by root it would
report if the system is in crisis and the uid of any process that is asking
for large amounts of ram while the system
is in crisis.

create a SIGDANGER handler that is sent out too all tasks that have
registered a handler when the kernel enters oom_kill, give these tasks a high
priority access too system resources.

this would enable user land programs too deal with the situation with out
continuous polling free ram/swap. They could email/page sysadmin and user
about the crisis and add additional swap resources and kill any know non
essential tasks. and probe system for possible broken tasks, such as
netscape-common tasks not connected too netscape client, at least i have been
known too find these when netscape crashes.

Okay that is my idea, i am putting on my flame proof suit and getting ready
for the flames that are sure too come my way.....

James
kernelnewbie in training