Public bug reported:
This has bothered me for all of the time I have used linux. When you
have swap enabled (as most people do), and try to allocate a huge amount
of memory (I accidentally allocated a 16 GB array with only 8 GB of
physical memory) the following happens:
1. The OS tries to allocate the memory.
2. It sees there isn't enough RAM.
3. It allocates the memory in swap, or swaps other programs out.
4. In doing so, for some reason the entire desktop becomes *completely*
unresponsive. Occasionally one can get the mouse cursor to jerk around but only
if you're really lucky can you get to a terminal and kill the offending process.
The OOM killer is never called because technically, there is still
memory left in swap. But unless you are willing to wait hours with an
unresponsive desktop that's entirely useless. THIS ISN'T A PROBLEM
SPECIFIC TO MY SYSTEM. I've seen it on every single Linux machine I've
ever used over the last 10 years.
It doesn't need to be this way. I have no idea why the mouse freezes for
example - can the kernel really not handle swapping and bloody mouse
moving at the same time? And why the hell can't it say "Oh, Matlab wants
a 16 GB array? That might take some time... maybe I'll give it a low
priority so that the whole freakin' computer doesn't freeze while I do
it."
Srsly. And yes, I lost work because of this bug.
/rant.
** Affects: ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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Desktop completely unresponsive on low memory due to stupid swapping.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668050
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