From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752877Ab1HZSZ1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:25:27 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:26538 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751152Ab1HZSZ0 (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:25:26 -0400 Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:25:22 -0400 From: Dave Jones To: David Rientjes Cc: Linux Kernel , linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: VM: add would_have_oomkilled sysctl Message-ID: <20110826182522.GB2720@redhat.com> Mail-Followup-To: Dave Jones , David Rientjes , Linux Kernel , linux-mm@kvack.org References: <20110826161422.GB30573@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 11:21:20AM -0700, David Rientjes wrote: > On Fri, 26 Aug 2011, Dave Jones wrote: > > > At various times in the past, we've had reports where users have been > > convinced that the oomkiller was too heavy handed. I added this sysctl > > mostly as a knob for them to see that the kernel really doesn't do much better > > without killing something. > > > > The page allocator expects that the oom killer will kill something to free > memory so it takes a temporary timeout and then retries the allocation > indefinitely. We never oom kill unless we are going to retry > indefinitely, otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile. > > That said, the only time the oom killer doesn't actually do something is > when it detects an exiting thread that will hopefully free memory soon or > when it detects an eligible thread that has already been oom killed and > we're waiting for it to exit. So this patch will result in an endless > series of unratelimited printk's. > > Not sure that's very helpful. It's an old patch, and the oom-killer heuristics have improved since then, as this didn't used to be the case. Regardless, I'll just drop it from Fedora. thanks, Dave