> prevents the system from overbooking allocations and so avoiding > dependence on an oom killer (always? almost always?) but I don't know
An engineer would say always a mathematician would say "almost" 8) > of the resources you have available. I have a feeling Alan's latest > patches are a lot cleverer than what "strict allocation" did in the > old days (with each fork() needing to be prepared for the child to > scribble over its entire shared MAP_PRIVATE library mappings and > modern applications average tens of them). I really must go and look > harder (unless I've provoked him enough to give a few quick > comments here...) They are a bit smarter. The basic theory hasnt changed except that objects in the modern unix world may not be swap backed. File backed resources don't consume swap
