From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jul 14 13: 2:11 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from pzero.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (gigabit.solidum.com [216.13.130.242]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14B361545B for ; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:01:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca) Received: from morden.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (localhost.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca [127.0.0.1]) by pzero.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA02088; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 15:58:24 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199907141958.PAA02088@pzero.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca> To: jnemeth@victoria.tc.ca (John Nemeth) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, tech-userlevel@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Swap overcommit (was Re: Replacement for grep(1) (part 2)) In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 14 Jul 1999 10:53:27 PDT." <199907141753.KAA02096@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 15:58:23 -0400 From: Michael Richardson Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >>>>> "John" == John Nemeth writes: John> On one system I administrate, the largest process is typically John> rpc.nisd (the NIS+ server daemon). Killing that process would be a John> bad thing (TM). You're talking about killing random processes. John> This is no way to run a system. It is not possible for any John> arbitrary decision to always hit the correct process. That is a John> decision that must be made by a competent admin. This is the John> biggest argument against overcommit: there is no way to gracefully John> recover from an out of memory situation, and that makes for an John> unreliable system. No, I don't agree. This is a biggest argument against solving the overcommit situation with SIGKILL. I have no problem with overcommit as a concept, I have a problem with being unable to keep my possibly big processes (X, rpc.nisd, etc. depending on cicumstances) from being victims. ] Train travel features AC outlets with no take-off restrictions| firewalls [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON |net architect[ ] mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[ ] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message