> From: Nick Piggin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > I'd be interested to know how OOM and page reclaim behaves after these > patches > (or with a newer kernel).
We didn't get far today. The various suggestions everyone has for solving this problem spurred several new discussions inside the office and raised more questions. At the heart of the problem Andrew is right, heavy handed tactics to force limits on page cache don't solve anything and may just squeeze the problem to new areas. Modifying tar is really a band aid and not a solution, there is still a fundamental problem with memory management in this setup. Nick suggested the possibility of a patching the kernel or upgrading to a new kernel. Linus made the suggestion of dialing the value of min_free_kbytes down to match something more in line with what might be expected in a system with 400MB memory as a way to possibly make VM or at least a portion of VM simulate a restricted amount of memory. And, I have seen a couple suggestions about creating a new proc vm file to do things like tweak max_buffer_heads dynamically. So here's a silly (crazy) question (or two). If I'm going to go through all the trouble to change the kernel and maybe create a new proc file how much code would I have to touch to create a proc file to set something like, let's say, effective memory and have all the vm calculations use effective memory as the basis for swap and cache calculations? And can I stop at the vm engine or does the sprawl farther out? To the untrained mind it seems like this might be the best of both worlds. It sounds like it would allow an embedded system like ours to set aside a chunk of ram for a special purpose and designate a sandbox for the OS. I am, of course, making the *bold* assumption here that a majority of the vm algorithms are based off something remotely similar to a value which represents physical memory. Thoughts? Stones? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
