From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1163465AbWLGV5t (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Dec 2006 16:57:49 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1163470AbWLGV5t (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Dec 2006 16:57:49 -0500 Received: from zcars04e.nortel.com ([47.129.242.56]:37583 "EHLO zcars04e.nortel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1163465AbWLGV5s (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Dec 2006 16:57:48 -0500 Message-ID: <45788E55.5070009@nortel.com> Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:57:41 -0600 From: "Chris Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050427 Red Hat/1.7.7-1.1.3.4 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jesper Juhl CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: additional oom-killer tuneable worth submitting? References: <45785DDD.3000503@nortel.com> <9a8748490612071050q60b378c4ldf039140ffd721be@mail.gmail.com> <457886B4.2030507@nortel.com> <9a8748490612071337p612f7a2t5fd31968a9ff5da9@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <9a8748490612071337p612f7a2t5fd31968a9ff5da9@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 07 Dec 2006 21:57:52.0953 (UTC) FILETIME=[BE835A90:01C71A4A] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jesper Juhl wrote: >> Jesper Juhl wrote: >> > What happens in the case where the OOM killer really, really needs to >> > kill one or more processes since there is not a single drop of memory >> > available, but all processes are below their configured thresholds? > I realize that if this case happens the system is misconfigured as far > as oomthresh goes, but if this is a knob that we put in the mainline > kernel then I believe there should be some sort of emergency handling > code that takes this situation into account. Perhaps throw some very > nasty looking log messages and then fall back to the classic OOM > killer behaviour..? Yeah, I can see that the reboot might be a bit drastic for mainline. I think the fallback to classic behaviour might work okay. Anyway, the chances of hitting that case are likely pretty slim. The way we've been using this is to only set the threshold for fairly important long-lived daemons. Much of the "standard" stuff (shell, cat, cp, mv, etc.) is left unprotected. Chris