Re: [PATCH -mm] throttle direct reclaim when too many pages are isolated already (v3)

Andrew Morton
2009-07-16T04:27:25Z

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:09:05 -0400 Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> wrote:

> > If we were to step back and approach this in a broader fashion, perhaps
> > we would find some commonality with the existing TIF_MEMDIE handling,
> > dunno.
>
> Good point - what is it that makes TIF_MEMDIE special
> wrt. other fatal signals, anyway?
>
> I wonder if we should not simply "help along" any task
> with fatal signals pending, anywhere in the VM (and maybe
> other places in the kernel, too).
>
> The faster we get rid of a killed process, the sooner its
> resources become available to the other processes.

Spose so.

Are their any known (or makeable uppable) situations in which such a
change would be beneficial? Maybe if the system is in a hopeless
swapstorm and someone is killing processes in an attempt to get control
back.