On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 21:23:54 +0000 (GMT), Alan Cox wrote:
>> Really the whole oom_kill process seems bass-ackwards to me. I can't in my mind
>> logically justify annihilating large-VM processes that have been running for
>> days or weeks instead of just returning ENOMEM to a process that just started
>> up.
>
>How do you return an out of memory error to a C program that is out of memory
>due to a stack growth fault. There is actually not a language construct for it
SIGSEGV.
Stack overflow for a language like C using standard implementation techniques
is the same as a page fault while accessing a page for which there is no backing
store. SIGSEGV is the logical choice, and the one I'd expect on other Unices.
oom_kill should simply fail the current allocation which cannot be satisfied,
either by having {s,}brk/mmap return error or by posting a SIGSEGV. This would
actually also be the correct answer, if Linux didn't overcommit memory ...
Remove the overcommit crap and oom_kill can go away; this entails ensuring
that mmap() honors MAP_RESERVE/MAP_NORESERVE.
/Mikael
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 23 2001 - 21:00:19 EST