On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 12:32 +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > Hi list, > > > I need the esteemed people's second opinion to a recommendation I gave a > client. > > > The setup: > > Machine with 16GB ram and a bit of swap, running 32bit gentoo with (as > far as I know) 3:1 memory split. > > > The symptoms: > > Every so often the oom-killer kicks in, for no apparent reason. The > processes it kills appear to be randomly chosen. Monitoring was not > turned on, but there is no reason to suspect the 16GB+swap were nowhere > near exhausted at the time. > > > My suggested diagnosis and recommendations: > > The kernel only has 1GB with which to work, which causes it to run out > of memory for managing the page tables. I recommended they: > > - As a first stage, disable the swap. > > - As a second stage - switch to a 64bit kernel > > > My question is whether my diagnosis makes any sense, and if not, whether > anyone has any better idea as to what might be the problem. > > > Also, is there any way to monitor how much kernel memory is in use? It > seems that monitoring the "LowTotal" and "LowFree" values in > /proc/meminfo may be what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure I'm reading > the docs proprely. > > > Shachar
If they can't use 64bit (for some reason), the 4G/4G split patch might solve the problem. (though you may need to dig out some ancient kernel to use it) - Gilboa ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
