Re: [PATCH] VM fix for 2.4.0-test9 & OOM handler

[Ingo Molnar]

On Mon, 9 Oct 2000, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:

> > No. It's only needed if your OOM algorithm is so crappy that
> > it might end up killing init by mistake.
> 
> The algorithm you posted on the list in this thread will kill init if
> on 4Mbyte machine without swap init is large 3 Mbytes and you execute
> a task that grows over 1M.

i think the OOM algorithm should not kill processes that have
child-processes, it should first kill child-less 'leaves'. Killing a
process that has child processes likely results in unexpected behavior of
those child-processes. (and equals to effective killing of those
child-processes as well.)

But this mechanizm can be abused (a malicious memory hog can create a
child-process just to avoid the OOM-killer) - but there are ways to avoid
this, eg. to add all the 'MM badness' points to children? Ie. a child
which has MM-abuser parent(s) will definitely be killed first.

        Ingo

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