From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932650AbVHTDZ6 (ORCPT ); Fri, 19 Aug 2005 23:25:58 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932651AbVHTDZ6 (ORCPT ); Fri, 19 Aug 2005 23:25:58 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:17092 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932650AbVHTDZ5 (ORCPT ); Fri, 19 Aug 2005 23:25:57 -0400 Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 20:24:26 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Chuck Ebbert <76306.1226@compuserve.com> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org Subject: Re: [patch 2.6.13-rc6] docs: fix misinformation about overcommit_memory Message-Id: <20050819202426.5208961e.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <200508192318_MC3-1-A7AE-1D7A@compuserve.com> References: <200508192318_MC3-1-A7AE-1D7A@compuserve.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 1.0.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Chuck Ebbert <76306.1226@compuserve.com> wrote: > > +Controls overcommit of system memory: It should explain what "overcommit" is. > + > +0 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of > + address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It > + ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing > + overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to > + allocate slighly more memory in this mode. This is the > + default. > + > +1 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific > + applications. > + > +2 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit > + for the system is not permitted to exceed swap + a > + configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. Configurable how? > + Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations > + this means a process will not be killed while accessing > + pages but will receive errors on memory allocation as > + appropriate.