Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init

Mike Galbraith
2001-03-24T15:07:59Z

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Jonathan Morton wrote:

> >General thread comment:
> >To those who are griping, and obviously rightfully so, Rik has twice
> >stated on this list that he could use some help with VM auto-balancing.
> >The responses (visible on this list at least) was rather underwhelming.
> >I noted no public exchange of ideas.. nada in fact.
> >
> >Get off your lazy butts and do something about it. Don't work on the
> >oom-killer though.. that's only a symptom. Work on the problem instead.
>
> Since I'm hacking around in this area anyway (warning: kernel newbie
> alert!), I'd be happy to help examine the balancing code from a fresh
> perspective. Where should I be looking?

Everything in mm plus fs/buffer.c at least. (plus includes) A good
place to start is with __alloc_pages().. that will drag you through
a lot of the balancing code. Following entry points (sys_brk, sys_mmap
etc) is highly recommended. Be prepared for dizzy spells if you've
never toured mm-land before :)

-Mike