[nylug-talk] RedHat AS4 and wacky out-of-memory behavior

[Sunny Dubey]

On Wednesday 02 April 2008 09:42:14 pm Frank D. Greco wrote:
> The syslog showed a long list of processes that it killed (seemed to
> be random to me).  One of the processes was init, which was quite
> surprising.
>
> Is this semi-expected behavior when Linux (RH) is in a low-mem state?

When linux runs out of all available memory, its VM uses a feature 
called "Out of Memory Killer" (aka OOM Killer), which kills any process 
attempting to allocate additional memory, and (possibly) idle low 
priority processes as well.

The kernel's VM has been fixed long ago to not kill init and some other 
types of processes deemed important as well.  (Since like the later linux 
2.4x series or so.)  You may wish to see if they are upgraded kernels for 
your distro or just roll your own update.

-- 
Sunny Dubey

  mail:  sunny at audiowiki.org
  tele:  212.333.3542