In article <5l6l3u$mo4@nz11.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> you write:
>I'd propose a fairly simple solution: send a SIGURG signal to
>whatever process has a signal handler for it installed.
Are you sure you want SIGURG to be sent?
>From signal(7):
SIGURG 16,23,21 BG Urgent condition on socket (4.2 BSD)
>This process could then do whatever it wants to, such as allocating
>more swap, killing off an errant process or send an E-Mail to
>the admin to go out and buy more RAM.
This process should look through its sockets and check them for urgent
data, nothing else.
>Policy is for userland.
I agree in this. But you should take care: If the system is badly in need
of free memory, it may be the case that the user mode "free memory"
daemon can't be paged in anymore.
I.e. who frees the memory needed for the memory freeing daemon?
Regards, Felix.