James Sutherland <jas88@cam.ac.uk> said:
[...]
> Except that the process failing is probably NOT the cause of the problem.
> If your application causes problems on the server, I want it to be YOUR
> application which dies as a result - not all the other ones!
If you think about it for a moment, it is rarely one process that is the
root of the problem, it is the set of all processes together that is
causing it. So, by your own logic, the system should just panic.
[...]
> No, we have GIVEN it 256K of RAM. We don't say "We've got 255Mb of RAM,
> how much would you like?", the app says "I need 17384Kb of RAM to operate.
> Can I have it please?". Either the kernel says "yes", and it works, or it
> says "no", and the app gives up.
And that is the only sensible thing the vast mayority of apps can do, i.e.,
go down.
[...]
> We NEVER allocate memory via malloc() and then later discover we can't
> honour that allocation - once the memory has been allocated, it is the
> property of that process, to do with as it pleases.
Never overcommit memory means a few Gb of RAM+spap just in case everybody
decides to cash in at the same time. I've got much better uses for said
resources...
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