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

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Message-ID: <20190902201553.GA6546@bug>
Date:   Mon, 2 Sep 2019 22:15:53 +0200
From:   Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:     James Courtier-Dutton <james.dutton@...il.com>
Cc:     Daniel Drake <drake@...lessm.com>,
        "Artem S. Tashkinov" <aros@....com>,
        LKML Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux@...lessm.com, hadess@...ess.net,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>
Subject: Re: Let's talk about the elephant in the room - the Linux kernel's
 inability to gracefully handle low memory pressure

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