On Mon, 24 May 2010 10:26:39 +0100 Tharindu Rukshan Bamunuarachchi <btharindu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > thankx a lot Hugh ... I will try this out ... (bit harder patch > already patched SLES kernel :-p ) .... > > BTW, what does Alan means by "strict overcommit" ? Strict overcommit works like banks should. It tries to ensure that at any point it has sufficient swap and memory to fulfill any possible use of allocated address space. So in strict overcommit mode you should almost never see an OOM kill (there are perverse cases as always), but you will need a lot more swap that may well never be used. In the normal mode the kernel works like the US banking system and makes speculative guesses that all the resources it hands out will never be needed at once. That has the corresponding risk that one day it might at which point you get a meltdown (or in the kernel case OOM kills) Alan -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>