>
> Thanks to all who have lobbed missiles at me, especially those who believe
> that they known all that can be known. I simply cannot respond to them all.
> If this method of allocating memory is indeed as wide spread as some have
> claimed, it hasn't been going on as long as some of you "experts" claim.
> It is clear that some people have different design "goals" than others. This
> does not mean that your's is the right answer for everyone else.
>
> It may be the explanation why in the last few years I have seen so many
> programs die for no cause in the middle of the day. (On non-Linux systems
> so far.) In an operational environment, such havoc is not appreciated.
In an operational environment we bolt on plenty of cheap swap space, and
keep an eye on it daily to make sure we don't need more. I've run one
system with six spindles of swapfiles just so the users never see "out of
memory". If VM starvation is strongly unappreciated then one explains
the situation and waits to see who will fund the necessary hardware
acquisitions.
None of the systems I attend is involved in life-or-death stuff. If any
were, I'd have different design goals all right, and I'd make sure they
were met. The deadliest behavior in most environments, however, is
overspending.
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer MWOOD@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU
Those who will not learn from history are doomed to reimplement it.