From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 27 May 2002 17:46:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 27 May 2002 17:46:04 -0400 Received: from pc2-cwma1-5-cust12.swa.cable.ntl.com ([80.5.121.12]:30450 "EHLO irongate.swansea.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 27 May 2002 17:46:04 -0400 Subject: Re: Memory management in Kernel 2.4.x From: Alan Cox To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.3 (1.0.3-6) Date: 27 May 2002 23:48:46 +0100 Message-Id: <1022539726.4124.2.camel@irongate.swansea.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 2002-05-27 at 22:22, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > Followup to: <1022513156.1126.289.camel@irongate.swansea.linux.org.uk> > By author: Alan Cox > In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > > > On a -ac kernel with mode 2 or 3 set for overcommit you have to run out > > of kernel resources to hang the box. It won't go OOM because it can't. > > That wouldn't be a VM bug but a leak or poor handling of kernel > > allocations somewhere. Sadly the changes needed to do that (beancounter > > patch) were things Linus never accepted for 2.4 > > > > Well, if you can't fork a new process because that would push you into > overcommit, then you usually can't actually do anything useful on the > machine. Thats actually easy to deal with and on my list for modes 4 and 5 (2 and 3 with root granted a reserved fraction)