Re: Fun with OOM on 2.4.18-pre9

[Jesse Pollard <pollard@tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil>]

toad <mtoseland@cableinet.co.uk>:
> 
> I do a make -j bzImage
> I have 2 large processes (Kaffe) running in the background. They are
> driven by scripts like this:
> 
> while true;
> do su freenet -c java freenet.node.Main;
> done
> 
> I have 512MB of RAM and no swap on 2.4.18-pre9.
> Kernel eventually slows to a near complete halt, and starts killing
> processes.
> It kills Kaffe several times
> Out of Memory: Killed process xyz (Kaffe)
> (no I don't have logs, sorry)
> Each time it's a different pid, having respawned from its parent
> process. Then later, it apparently becomes unkillable - each time it
> respawns it is *the same PID*. VT switching works, but otherwise the
> system is unresponsive. It is not clear whether the make -j is still
> running. Immediately before this, it did the same thing with dictd, but
> eventually got around to Kaffe. After a fairly long wait I rebooted with
> the reset switch.
> 
> Any more information useful? Is this known behaviour?

Known behaviour - ie. don't do that.

On most systems a "make -j4", or 6, or even 8 will work. But SOMETHING has
to give after memory fills up. The number of processes to use for -j
depends on the system. On mine (256MB, dual pentium pro) I don't do more
than 6, and 4 works best (lets me run solitare too).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse I Pollard, II
Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil

Any opinions expressed are solely my own.