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

[H. G.]

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Frank D. Greco <fgreco at crossroadstech.com>
wrote:

> At 06:03 AM 4/3/2008, Sunny Dubey wrote:
> >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.
>
>          Thanks for the info Sunny and Bryan!  Your posts were very
> helpful.
>
>         Who the heck thought that killing init when the kernel was running
>         out of memory in the first place was a good idea?  Sheesh...


What?  Its a _fantastic_ idea!  Killing init (and thus, all those pesky
bloated child processes)
will free up for you BOATLOADS of RAM!


>
>         Frank G.
> --
> +==============================================+
> | Crossroads Technologies Inc.                 |
> | www.CrossroadsTech dot com                   |
> | fgreco at REMOVEtheX!cross!roads!tech!dotXcom|
> +==============================================+
> --
>
>
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