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Misleading OOM messages

From:  Christoph Lameter <cl-AT-linux-foundation.org>
To:  David Rientjes <rientjes-AT-google.com>
Subject:  Misleading OOM messages
Date:  Tue, 12 May 2009 17:14:01 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID:  <alpine.DEB.1.10.0905121708470.14226@qirst.com>
Cc:  Andrew Morton <akpm-AT-linux-foundation.org>, Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh-AT-suse.de>, Nick Piggin <npiggin-AT-suse.de>, Mel Gorman <mel-AT-csn.ul.ie>, Peter Ziljstra <a.p.ziljstra-AT-chello.nl>, Dave Hansen <dave-AT-linux.vnet.ibm.com>, San Mehat <san-AT-android.com>, =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Arve_Hj=F8nnev=E5g?= <arve-AT-android.com>, linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org
Archive-link:  Article, Thread


While we are at it: Could we get rid of the name "Out of Memory" and stop
printing texts to that effect? What we call an OOM is a failure to
perform memory reclaim or we are running out of reserves due
to not being able to run reclaim. Mostly this is due to OS internal issues
having nothing to do actual amounts of memory available.

I have seen scores of people put more memory into their boxes because
they thought they did not have enough memory. Then there are those that
lower ulimit values so that users cannot allocate so much memory.




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Misleading OOM messages

Posted May 21, 2009 20:18 UTC (Thu) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

And kernel changing (again) the message one greps from syslogs helps how?

Overcommit needs to be understood also, the message output by kernel is
more of an identifier for the problem, not an explanation for it.

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