[ILUG] Out of Memory

[Paul Jakma]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000 singer at redbrick.dcu.ie wrote:

> > but how /do/ you handle OOM? 
> 
> Bring down the system!

> Oh, er, I mean send ENOMEM. 

it does. but that's not going to get you anywhere on overcommitted
memory (and solaris overcommits aswell), and it's that memory that
causes the problem. 

> Kill processes, 

this is not nice. linux does this, so does solaris i gather, so all this
shows is that solaris has a better process killing methodology. (but if
you're killing then you're already OOM).

> after
> shedding memory by running memory freeing up procedures. Unload kernel
> modules, anything. Just don't leave bugs like this in your kernel. 
> Kernel people know this, it was a bug in the OS.
> 

or perhaps a bug in the admin? why don't you have resource limits set
up?

> >And are these other OS's perhaps a lot slower than linux?
> 
> Yeh, everythings slower than Linux, that's why Linux rules </slashdot>.
> 

ah please don't throw "linux rules" at me. I'm not a fanaticist.

linux is actually very fast. 'tis faster than Tru64 V4 on Alpha, and
considerably faster than solaris 7 x86. You must know this. I'm not
saying it's inherently better, i'm just saying that it gets it speed by
being light, and therefore you have to set it up properly.

> b.
> 

-paul.