linux-kernel - Re: OOM notifications

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Message-ID: <47183D7A.7050902@nortel.com>
Date:	Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:15:38 -0600
From:	"Chris Friesen" <cfriesen@...tel.com>
To:	Ulrich Drepper <drepper@...hat.com>
CC:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...access.nl>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo@...ck.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: OOM notifications

Ulrich Drepper wrote:

> I agree.  Applications shouldn't be expected to be yet more complicated
> and have different levels of low memory handling.  You might want to
> give a process a second shot at handling SIGDANGER but after that's it's
> all about preparation for a shutdown.

I disagree.  From an embedded viewpoint it would be nice to have a 
"please free up memory", then a "we really need memory NOW", then 
finally the kernel oom killer.

The advantage of the middle message is that it allows userspace to do 
smarter things if it wants to (for instance, if there is an overall 
system manager or some such thing, it could do a better job of 
restarting tasks than the kernel oom killer since it knows the relative 
importance of tasks).

Chris
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