From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754174AbZETGDs (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 May 2009 02:03:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751527AbZETGDk (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 May 2009 02:03:40 -0400 Received: from silver.sucs.swan.ac.uk ([137.44.10.1]:49048 "EHLO silver.sucs.swan.ac.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750997AbZETGDk (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 May 2009 02:03:40 -0400 Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 07:03:27 +0100 From: Sitsofe Wheeler To: Willy Tarreau Cc: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh , Alan Cox , Andrea , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: super root shell/mode/api Message-ID: <20090520060327.GB31552@sucs.org> References: <861928.62033.qm@web23602.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <20090518103545.6603b08e@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090518161231.GC20244@khazad-dum.debian.net> <20090520043603.GA9725@1wt.eu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20090520043603.GA9725@1wt.eu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 06:36:04AM +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote: > > I don't know if mainline distros do this, but some distros dedicated to > embedded systems have been using that for ages, almost since Alan published > his first overcommit patch a long time ago. It's the only way to reach > very long uptimes on servers, as it also protects you against your own > mistakes (eg: stupid actions such as "vi access.log" when the file is > larger than memory). Shouldn't the vi case be taken care of by good ulimits? Certainly that's what I've seen openSUSE do by default (although strangely SLES 10 doesn't)... The last I heard about overcommit was that there were always some legitimate programs that could run that would be stopped by having it on (evolution always seemed to be mentioned for some reason). As such it would be surprising to see any of the desktop distros enabling it by default. I've been wondering for a while with my EeePC if strict overcommit is a no brainer if you are running without swap... In such systems the only things that can be forced out of RAM are mmap'd files (?) so does overcommit even happen? -- Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/