The OOM-Killer vs. Python

[Remi Turk]

Hi everybody,

Excuse me my late reply. I'm fighting a few thousand
messages from various mailing lists ATM ;-)

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 11:37:37PM -0800, Andrae Muys wrote:
> The problem with not overcommitting is that system calls are
> signifigantly slower then function calls, so malloc libraries normally
> block allocate memory to save reduce the number of syscalls made. 

Wrong AFAIK.
The problem with not overcommiting is that a lot of programs
allocate large amounts of memory without ever using it.
IOW, without overcommitting you won't be able to run a process
which allocates 500mb of memory and then uses only 10 bytes.
(Which, sadly enough, happens)

IIRC, the overcommit flag is used to determine whether a program
may allocate more than the total memory in the system.
For example, if you have 1G RAM and 1G swap, you normally
cannot allocate 2G + 1 byte. If you change the overcommit flag,
you can...

Happy Hacking

	Remi

-- 
See the light and feel my warm desire,
Run through your veins like the evening sun
It will live but no eyes will see it,
I'll bless your name before I die.

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