Controlling memory (was memory crash)

sheldon newhouse (pokie@tcimet.net)
Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:17:16 -0500 (EST)


As a result of the recent memory crash thread, certain things have come
up. If this isn't the place to discuss these things, please advise me for
the future.

My original post was a simple program which used some 7 MB of RAM. Having
a user run multiple copies of this can exhaust the total RAM and VM and
cause a crash.

The responses I got back (if I understand them correctly) give two options.

1. Control the total RAM or VM in a given shell or process.
2. Control the number of processes.

Is it impractical to have the vm manager check the total vm available when
a call is made to swap and kill the process if it will request too
much swap?

TIA,

-sen