Re: linux memory DOS

Nikolay N. Igotti (inn@sparc.spb.su)
Fri, 3 Sep 1999 11:42:06 +0400 ( )


I think that this problem seems to be theoretical, and can't be solved
with different "program killers", as criteria to kill is _very_ heuristic.
The problems is:
1. should we allow succesfully allocate more memory, that we can really
give, in hope that we'll have it in the future.
2. if answer to 1. is true, then we should _correctly_ handle cases when
application will be out of memory not when malloc'ing, but when
reading/writing. Maybe send signal, or message box:
"You program/kernel performed illegal operation.." ;))

Anyway, current situation is completly unacceptable for me.

Thanks,
Nikolay.

On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Rene Chaddock wrote:

> Just for the record, my computer went down because it ran out of memory
> today. I guess it killed a few things before it chanced on X (which killed
> pico, which was what had used the remaining 15 megs..) , because logging
> in again froze up the machine.. thats no good.
>
> Rene
>
> On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Alan Cox wrote:
> >
> > > > > However, every time I proposed it on this list it has gone down
> > > > > in a salvo of flames. And I have enough disk for swap now so I
> > > > > don't really care enough any more to fight that kind of resistance
> > > > > again.
> > > >
> > > > I'm all for it going into the main kernel tree, for what its worth.
> > >
> > > I don't think its the Right answer, but its certain a right
> > > answer. Lets see if we can get the Beancounter work Andrey
> > > Savochkin has been doing into 2.4.
> >
> > We probably want both in. The beancounter stuff can prevent
> > a lot of DoS emergency situations and the program killer is
> > able to get the machine back to work with minimal damage in
> > the rare situations that it gets out of hand.
> >
> > Rik
> > --
> > The Internet is not a network of computers. It is a network
> > of people. That is its real strength.
> > --
> > work at: http://www.reseau.nl/
> > home at: http://www.nl.linux.org/~riel/
> >
> >
> > -
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> >
>

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