From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jul 13 19:28: 3 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from implode.root.com (root.com [209.102.106.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 080C614F03; Tue, 13 Jul 1999 19:27:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from root@implode.root.com) Received: from implode.root.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by implode.root.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA14312; Tue, 13 Jul 1999 19:25:10 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199907140225.TAA14312@implode.root.com> To: "Charles M. Hannum" Cc: Matthew Dillon , Noriyuki Soda , Jason Thorpe , "Brian F. Feldman" , bright@rush.net, dcs@newsguy.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jon@oaktree.co.uk, tech-userlevel@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Swap overcommit (was Re: Replacement for grep(1) (part 2)) In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 13 Jul 1999 21:55:01 EDT." <199907140155.VAA14113@bikini.ihack.net> From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 19:25:10 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >The point is, the OS should have provided *some* mechanism to insure >that the long-running process wasn't affected. It didn't. That's a >clear failure of the OS to provide a reasonable environment for this >type of computing. > >Whether this should be solved by switching to a no-overcommit policy, >fiddling with the overcommit policy in some way, or whatever, is a >different issue. But you have not yet proposed any mechanism that >would have prevented this problem while still permitting me to get >work done. I've long felt that the best solution to problems like this is a per-user swap space quota. This gives admins a knob to manage the allocation of swap space while still allowing overcommit. The downside is that it doesn't provide a graceful way for a program to recover from it's overconsumption sins. I'd argue, however, that buggy software or incorrectly tuned systems should get what they deserve. -DG David Greenman Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org Creator of high-performance Internet servers - http://www.terasolutions.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message