From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> OOM killer might be triggered explicitly via sysrq+f. This is supposed to kill a task no matter what e.g. a task is selected even though there is an OOM victim on the way to exit. This is a big hammer for an admin to help to resolve a memory short condition when the system is not able to cope with it on its own in a reasonable time frame (e.g. when the system is trashing or the OOM killer cannot make sufficient progress) E.g. it doesn't make any sense to obey panic_on_oom setting because a) administrator could have used other sysrqs to achieve the panic/reboot and b) the policy would break an existing usecase to kill a memory hog which would be recoverable unlike the panic which might be configured for the real OOM condition. It also doesn't make much sense to panic the system when there is no OOM killable task because administrator might choose to do additional steps before rebooting/panicking the system. While we are there also add a comment explaining why sysctl_oom_kill_allocating_task doesn't apply to sysrq triggered OOM killer even though there is no explicit check and we subtly rely on current->mm being NULL for the context from which it is triggered. Also be more explicit about sysrq+f behavior in the documentation. Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> --- Documentation/sysrq.txt | 5 ++++- mm/oom_kill.c | 15 ++++++++++++--- 2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/sysrq.txt b/Documentation/sysrq.txt index 0e307c94809a..7664e93411d2 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysrq.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysrq.txt @@ -75,7 +75,10 @@ On other - If you know of the key combos for other architectures, please 'e' - Send a SIGTERM to all processes, except for init. -'f' - Will call oom_kill to kill a memory hog process. +'f' - Will call oom_kill to kill a memory hog process. Please note that + parallel OOM killer is ignored and a task is killed even though + there was an oom victim selected already. panic_on_oom is ignored + and the system doesn't panic if there are no oom killable tasks. 'g' - Used by kgdb (kernel debugger) diff --git a/mm/oom_kill.c b/mm/oom_kill.c index dff991e0681e..f2737d66f66a 100644 --- a/mm/oom_kill.c +++ b/mm/oom_kill.c @@ -687,8 +687,13 @@ bool out_of_memory(struct zonelist *zonelist, gfp_t gfp_mask, constraint = constrained_alloc(zonelist, gfp_mask, nodemask, &totalpages); mpol_mask = (constraint == CONSTRAINT_MEMORY_POLICY) ? nodemask : NULL; - check_panic_on_oom(constraint, gfp_mask, order, mpol_mask, NULL); + if (!force_kill) + check_panic_on_oom(constraint, gfp_mask, order, mpol_mask, NULL); + /* + * not affecting force_kill because sysrq triggered OOM killer runs from + * the workqueue context so current->mm will be NULL + */ if (sysctl_oom_kill_allocating_task && current->mm && !oom_unkillable_task(current, NULL, nodemask) && current->signal->oom_score_adj != OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) { @@ -702,8 +707,12 @@ bool out_of_memory(struct zonelist *zonelist, gfp_t gfp_mask, p = select_bad_process(&points, totalpages, mpol_mask, force_kill); /* Found nothing?!?! Either we hang forever, or we panic. */ if (!p) { - dump_header(NULL, gfp_mask, order, NULL, mpol_mask); - panic("Out of memory and no killable processes...\n"); + if (!force_kill) { + dump_header(NULL, gfp_mask, order, NULL, mpol_mask); + panic("Out of memory and no killable processes...\n"); + } else { + pr_info("Sysrq triggered out of memory. No killable task found...\n"); + } } if (p != (void *)-1UL) { oom_kill_process(p, gfp_mask, order, points, totalpages, NULL, -- 2.1.4 -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>