OOM documentation update [was: Linux killed Kenny, bastard!]

From: Evgeniy Polyakov
Date: Wed Jan 14 2009 - 11:12:39 EST


Please apply.
While existing interface do not fix the problems, they should be at least documented.

Sign.

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index d105eb4..f7530a1 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -2311,6 +2311,30 @@ increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer. Valid
values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables
oom-killing altogether for this process.

+Process to be killed at out-of-memory situation is selected among all others
+based on its badness score. This value equals to the memory size of the process
+originally and then changed according to its cpu time (utime + stime) and the
+run time (uptime - start time). The longer it runs the smaller is the score.
+Badness score is devided by the sqare root of the cpu time and then by
+the double square root of the run time.
+
+/proc/<pid>/oom_score shows process' current badness score.
+
+Following heueristics are then applied:
+ * if task was reniced, its score doubles
+ * superuser or direct hardware access tasks (CAP_SYS_ADMIN, CAP_SYS_RESOURCE
+ or CAP_SYS_RAWIO) have their score divided by 4
+ * if oom condition happened in one cpuset and checked task does not belong
+ to it, its score is divided by 8
+ * resulted score is multiplied by the two in the power of oom_adj when it is
+ positive, and devided otherwise, i.e.
+ points <<= oom_adj when it is positive and
+ points >>= oom_adj otherwise
+
+Swapped tasks are killed first.
+Task with the biggest number of badness points is selected to be killed.
+Usually children tasks are prefered compared to their parent.
+
2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
-------------------------------------------------------------



--
Evgeniy Polyakov
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