From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756462AbZJ2TBy (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755982AbZJ2TBy (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:54 -0400 Received: from mail-iw0-f180.google.com ([209.85.223.180]:53537 "EHLO mail-iw0-f180.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755874AbZJ2TBx (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:53 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=I2MHMHIz066Awp6RI5/0YcnRTON57wBk7Xzq6TPJiLQfmCXpqGcijXCQLc9Jeu1GiU eYCOiF6RgeJvOlBkgf1FoMFKM1rQqXH8FkFmKuGHRBQNCjtlVTnVaKEXTz1TjcpGOHbr aUK4xlCf7wcCHLthyjZEQ00HwOUMsYUAxzv74= MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:22 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: How to immunize a process from the OOM Killer From: Juan Miscaro To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi, I'm running 2.6.24 on Ubuntu. I've got a OOM Killer gone wild. I have plenty of free memory (over 40 GB) and lots of processes are being murdered. Anyway, I would like to first prevent a few processes from being killed in the hopes of buying me time (users can work) to discover why the killer is being invoked in the first place. I've read in a few places [1] that in order to immunize a process you need to modify the value of /proc/PID/oom_adj. Thing is, such files cannot be edited directly. How do I achieve my goal? Thank you, -- jm [1] http://linux-mm.org/OOM_Killer http://lwn.net/Articles/317814/