[ILUG] Out of Memory

[David Murphy]

Quoting <Pine.LNX.4.21.0003062102090.12018-100000 at hibernia.spin.ie>
by Paul Jakma <paul at clubi.ie>:

> However - as i pointed out before - when your OS has to start
> killing things, then you are already OOM!!!! so solaris isn't much
> cleverer than linux about avoiding OOM (although perhaps more
> conservative), it's just solaris' post-OOM process killer is
> cleverer from the sounds of things.

If you don't have enough memory, you don't have enough, and that's a
hardware configuration issue no OS is going to solve. However, an OS
can be more or less good at dealing with the situation. In my
experience, Solaris and FreeBSD don't lock up, Linux does. Your
experience may well vary - the only way to get beyond "Well, FooOS
never locked up on me" is sit everyone down in one room and let them
see it in person.

> a) a deadlocked machine (pre 2.2.14 linux)

> or 

> b) a machine where the OS has killed some of your processes -
> perhaps innocent and/or important ones.. (linux
> 2.2.14+/solaris/etc..)

> neither option is nice.

Are you really suggesting A) is not many, many times worse than B)?

> As i've been trying to point out (only to be drowned out in shouts
> of "but solaris..") as an admin you need to know the benefit/risk
> tradeoff, and how to minimise the risk part of the equation. The
> fact that that benefit/risk ratio is different on linux compared to
> Unix xyz is irrelevant. (but you need to be aware of it).

Put it a different way around - if on every other modern unix, the
worst case scenario is processes start getting killed, but on Linux
the worst case is the box hardhangs, why the smeg is any sane person
armed with this knowledge use linux?

-- 
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"That's a malicious rumour. I'll run over anyone who repeats it."
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