Ask stupid questions and you'll get a stupid answers, was: Technological advantages over Linux

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 10:56:16 -0500
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 7/26/20 10:52 AM, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 10:39:16 -0500
> > Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> > 
> >> My understanding of Linux OOM killer lies along same lines though my
> >> understanding is much more simplified: kill minimal number of processes
> >> to recover maximum amount of resources.
> > 
> > 	Not always the right thing to do though.
> > 
> >> Another speculative way to say
> >> it would be: process owning maximum amount of RAM that keeps allocating
> >> more RAM is first candidate.
> > 
> > 	What a pity if that is the heavy weight analytic program that
> > has a run time of several hours/days and is the only thing that matters
> > running on the system.
> > 
> 
> And yes, I agreed with your sentiments (or judgement): killing a process 
> is a bad thing always. Agreed before writing any of my comments.

	The trouble is there really isn't anything else the OS can do
because nobody ever thought to implement SIG_RELEASE_SOME_MEMORY_PLEASE
which would probably be the ideal solution provided at least *some*
programs responded to it.

	Which leaves the only variable how to choose which process to kill
and there are no general rules for a good choice.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org>