Is it normal that a user can take down the whole system by using too much memory?

[RW]

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 19:25:31 -0400
Brennan Vincent wrote:


> I'm also curious, however, to learn more from an OS design
> perspective. Why isn't it possible for the kernel to realize it
> should kill `eatmem` rather than make the system unusable?

I did something similar a few years ago, and the process was reliably
killed.