Taming the OOM killer [LWN.net]

Taming the OOM killer

Posted Feb 17, 2009 8:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: Taming the OOM killer by michaeljt
Parent article: Taming the OOM killer

simple, the kernel doesn't know what is right for you. how can it know that you really don't want this program that you start to use all available ram (even at the expense of other programs)

the distro is in the same boat. if they configured it to do what you want, they would have other people screaming at them that they would rather see the computer slow down than have programs die (you even see people here arguing that)

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Taming the OOM killer

Posted Feb 17, 2009 14:27 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

> simple, the kernel doesn't know what is right for you. how can it know that you really don't want this program that you start to use all available ram (even at the expense of other programs)

It does take a decision though - to allow all programmes to allocate as much RAM as they wish by default, even if it is not present, is very definitely a policy decision. Interestingly Wine fails to start if I set ulimit -v in this way (I can guess why). I wonder whether disabling overcommit would also prevent it from working?