VM: killing process X

[Christos Ricudis]

On Fri, 28 May 2004 13:18:51 +0100
Konstantinos Peletidis <kpeletidis at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:

> Geia sas,
> Psaxnontas sto google ema8a pws o kernel, apo tote pou afaire8hke 
> o OOM killer, an ksemeinei apo virtual memory skotwnei 
> psilorandomly processes mexri na hremhsoun ta pragmata.

H alh8eia einai oti de mporei na kanei kai tipote allo. Assume this scenario : 

* You have 400 mb of virtual memory free
* You run something.big
* Now, you suddenly have 1 mb of virtual memory free 
* You run something small 
* Something small requests 2 mb of memory
* OOM killer kills the something small process

To senario einai poly syxnotero apo oti fantazesai. Me opoiadhpote logikh kai na prospa8hseis na dialekseis TI 8a skotwseis, exeis megalh pi8anothta na skotwseis kapoio entelws asxeto process.

O monos algori8mos poy douleyei einai o ekshs : 

1) At OOM condition, scan process list 
2) Netscape found? kill it and return 
3) Mozilla found? Kill it and return 
4) Evolution found? Kill it and return 
5) Java VM found? Kill it and return 
6) Nothing of the above? Question the user WHAT the heck is running other than these that COULD EVER CAUSE a OOM condition even in a 32mb VM environment. 


-- 
Christos Ricudis				ricudis at itc.auth.gr
Systems Administrator				+30-2310-998305
IT Support Center
Aristotles University of Thessaloniki, GREECE