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Message-ID: <3f250c7104120207524399d522@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:52:13 -0400
From: Mauricio Lin <mauriciolin@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Mauricio Lin <mauriciolin@gmail.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Out of memory killer - time conditions before killing a process
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Does anyone know why in the out_of_memory(int gfp_mask) function has
the following conditions:

	 * If it's been a long time since last failure,
	 * we're not oom.
	 */
	if (since > 5*HZ)
		goto reset;

	/*
	 * If we haven't tried for at least one second,
	 * we're not really oom.
	 */
	since = now - first;
	if (since < HZ)
		goto out_unlock;

	/*
	 * If we have gotten only a few failures,
	 * we're not really oom. 
	 */
	if (++count < 10)
		goto out_unlock;

These conditions prevent the oom_kill() function to be invoked. Could
anyone explain about it?
Why 5 seconds, count variable less than 10 ...?

BR,

Mauricio Lin.