I am running kernel 2.1.123 on a couple of workstations and find a
reliable way to make the machines completely non-responsive is simply
to run a buggy X application which tries to allocate more memory than
is availabe. The only way out is a hard reset or a Alt-SysRq
sequence. In ordinary circumstances, the memory and swap space on
each machine is perfectly adequate and so I don't see "get more
memory" as being a solution. I could just get rid of the buggy apps,
but feel that the system ought to offer some protection against the
Out Of Memory scenario (i.e. a program shouldn't be able to cause a
system freeze simply by using too much memory.)
To solve this, I have been trying out Rik van Riel's OOM patch at
"http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/patches/killer117.diff". It does the
right thing in most cases and, as he has told me, it could certainly
use more testing and fine-tuning. Will this or something like it
appear in v. 2.2?
Regards,
Roy Bixler
rcbixler@nyx.net
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