Re: Let's talk about the elephant in the room - the Linux kernel's inability to gracefully handle low memory pressure

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> >
> > And if there is a meaningful way to make the kernel behave better, that would
> > obviously be of huge value too.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Daniel
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Is there a way for an application to be told that there is a memory
> pressure situation?
> For example, say I do a "make -j32"  and half way through the compile
> it hits a memory pressure situation.
> If make could have been told about it. It could give up on some of the
> parallel compiles, and instead proceed as if the user have typed "make
> -j4". It could then re-try the failed compile parts, that failed due
> to memory pressure.
> I know all applications won't be this clever, but providing a kernel
> API so that an application could do something about it, if the
> programmer of that application has thought about it.

Support is not really needed in many applications. It would be nice to
have for make and web browsers... And I suspect it is easy to do interface
becomes available.

Best regards,
								Pavel