Dan Melomedman writes: > won't mount my FSes 'async' (and MTA requires 'sync'). The machine has > been in near-crash states before (I accidentally exhausted all physical > and swap memory a long while ago).
If a machine halts in such a situation, that should be properly classified as a bug in the operating system kernel. A properly designed O/S will handle all exception conditions in a way that does not compromise the overall system integrity. Killing processes when virtual memory is exhausted? That's fine - any process can be killed at any time. Refuse memory allocations, and let processes keel over themselves? That's fine too, memory allocation are documented as possibly failing. Corrupting the filesystem by failing to properly flush all pending I/O? Unacceptable. Exhausting all virtual memory does not prevent any pending I/O operation from completing. -- Sam
