Re: death by swapping (was Re: Limits in the kernel)
George (greerga@nidhogg.ham.muohio.edu)
Sun, 21 Jun 1998 23:16:55 -0400 (EDT)
>> main ()
>> {
>> fork();
>> main();
>> }
>
>It's not supposed to make Linux crash, even from an account where you
>didn't bother to set resource limits. However, can bring Linux 2.1.106 to
>an unusable condition for me--a condition which it also triggered when I
>run ordinary programs. I am able to change consoles and use the magic
>SysRq and Scroll Lock combinations.
[...]
>Obviously the kernel is spending its time trying to swap. I say "trying"
>because I don't have any swap enabled, only 64 MB of physical RAM. When
>it gets into this condition, I can only shut down using the magic SysRq.
It's as easy as 'make -j' on a large package. You run out of swap and it
deadlocks trying to swap something out. Basically it never returns 'Out of
memory'
I do ALT+SysRq+K if I'm on the console with the memory-hog or ALT+SysRq+E
if I'm not (or if I'm in X)
-George
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