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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!nntp.coast.net!torn!nott!bcarh189.bnr.ca!bmerhc5e.bnr.ca!bcarh8ab.bnr.ca!bcrkh13.bnr.ca!bmtlh538!lew From: lew@bnr.ca (Pierre Lewis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: Memory overcommit (was Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison)) Date: 22 Jan 96 12:20:50 GMT Organization: Bell Northern Research Lines: 19 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <lew.822313250@bmtlh538> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4digah$a7r@durban.vector.co.za> <4dklfv$27e@park.uvsc.edu> <4dlrag$fmn@nntpb.cb.att.com> <4dp2hp$ru8@usc.edu> Reply-To: lew@bnr.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: bmtlh538.bnr.ca X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #3 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2091 comp.unix.solaris:58077 comp.unix.aix:69367 blarson@sundry.hsc.usc.edu (Bob Larson) writes: > Overcommit may have its uses, but does not belong on a production > machine. (AIX's habit of killing important processes least likly to > be causing the problem first just makes it worse I had a shock when I realized that AIX can kill you (a process) at unpredictable times, just for trying to access some memory it (AIX) has already granted you. The only valid place for a process to be told it's out of memory is sbrk(2), typically inside malloc(3). On the version of AIX I saw, one could set PSALLOC=early to prevent the late allocation algorithm from catching you. See malloc(3). --- Pierre LEWIS +1 514 765-8207 (ESN: 852-8207) lew@bnr.ca http://47.64.3.171:8080/experimental/lew/Menu.html Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. :-) [Larry Wall]