linux-kernel - Re: VM: add would_have

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Message-ID: <20110826182522.GB2720@redhat.com>
Date:	Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:25:22 -0400
From:	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>
To:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
Cc:	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: VM: add would_have_oomkilled sysctl

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 11:21:20AM -0700, David Rientjes wrote:
 > On Fri, 26 Aug 2011, Dave Jones wrote:
 > 
 > > At various times in the past, we've had reports where users have been
 > > convinced that the oomkiller was too heavy handed. I added this sysctl
 > > mostly as a knob for them to see that the kernel really doesn't do much better
 > > without killing something.
 > > 
 > 
 > The page allocator expects that the oom killer will kill something to free 
 > memory so it takes a temporary timeout and then retries the allocation 
 > indefinitely.  We never oom kill unless we are going to retry 
 > indefinitely, otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile.
 > 
 > That said, the only time the oom killer doesn't actually do something is 
 > when it detects an exiting thread that will hopefully free memory soon or 
 > when it detects an eligible thread that has already been oom killed and 
 > we're waiting for it to exit.  So this patch will result in an endless 
 > series of unratelimited printk's.
 > 
 > Not sure that's very helpful.

It's an old patch, and the oom-killer heuristics have improved since then,
as this didn't used to be the case.  Regardless, I'll just drop it from Fedora.

thanks,

	Dave
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