Re: [OT] Linux Out-Of-Memory Killer

[Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for the information.

I have experienced this OOM killer 2 years ago while handling a Linux
server running a big Oracle database.

It's really hard to troubleshoot what is the cause of sudden missing
of Oracle process, with no trace in any log, until one of our in-house
Linux guru points out that the swap space of 4GB is not enough to hold
4GB of RAM when Linux start swapping.

They solve the issue by increasing the swap space to 16GB, but, I
believe the real solution should be turning off the memory overcommit
so that Oracle database (or other application) logs the real problem
of not having enough memory.

This info is very valuable to me as a Linux engineer. Thanks again :)



On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> Marc Herbert wrote:
>> I suggest that Linux kids do not try this at home: the OutOfMemory killer
>> killed a few random processes of mine!
>
> Off-Topic for this mailing list but if so then you should configure
> your Linux kernel to avoid memory overcommit.  I have previously
> ranted about this in some detail here:
>
>  http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2007/08/msg00022.html
>
> And more recently with a little more rationale here:
>
>  http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/04/msg02554.html
>
> Bob
>
>



-- 
Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan