Re: [patch 5/5] oom: invoke OOM killer from pagefault handler

Nick Piggin
2006-10-12T15:19:17Z

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:12:13PM +0400, Kirill Korotaev wrote:
> Nick,
>
> AFAICS, 1 page allocation which is done in page fault handler
> can fail in the only case - OOM kills current, so if we failed
> we should have TIF_MEMDIE and just kill current.
> Selecting another process for killing if page fault fails means
> taking another victim with the one being already killed.
>

Hi Kirill,

I don't quite understand you. If the page allocation fails in the
fault handler, we don't want to kill current if it is marked as
OOM_DISABLE or sysctl_panic_on_oom is set... imagine a critical
service in a failover system.

It should be quite likely for another process to be kiled and
provide enough memory to keep the system running. Presuming you
have faith in the concept of the OOM killer ;)

Cheers,
Nick