Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:31:07 +0100 From: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> To: Igor Mozolevsky <igor@hybrid-lab.co.uk> Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>, Jason Evans <jasone@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: sbrk(2) broken Message-ID: <477E18FB.3040205@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <a2b6592c0801040318s9986f10u40cf725bc96304c6@mail.gmail.com> References: <477C82F0.5060809@freebsd.org> <863ateemw2.fsf@ds4.des.no> <20080104002002.L30578@fledge.watson.org> <a2b6592c0801040241l598ea9b7h57ad6889a1eccd3@mail.gmail.com> <86bq81c12d.fsf@ds4.des.no> <a2b6592c0801040318s9986f10u40cf725bc96304c6@mail.gmail.com>
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Igor Mozolevsky wrote: > On 04/01/2008, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@des.no> wrote: > >> For the same reason as it has for the last 20 years or so: memory >> overcommit, which means that malloc() allocates address space, not >> memory. Actual memory is allocated on-demand when the address space is >> used (read from or written to). If there is no RAM left and none can be >> freed by swapping out, the process gets killed. The process that gets >> killed is not necessarily the memory hog, it is merely the process that >> is unlucky enough to touch a new page at the wrong moment, i.e. when all >> RAM and swap is exhausted *or* everything in RAM is wired down and >> unswappable. > > Broadcasting SIGDANGER would be a much better option; followed by > SIGTERM to the memory hogger (to allow for graceful termination) and > only then SIGKILL. I can imagine a few (legitimate) scenarios when a > user process would want to hog as much RAM as possible... Do everyone a favour and research the topic in the archives, please. Another thread on the subject will just waste everyone's time. Kris
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