Re: non-automated test failure report! :)

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:37:08 +0000
    From:        David Holland <dholland-current%NetBSD.org@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20111116023708.GA6442%netbsd.org@localhost>

  | On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 05:51:20PM +0000, Eduardo Horvath wrote:
  |  > allow the kernel to return errors through the system call interface 
  |  > instead of just killing off processes.

  | maybe even to be able to warn
  | about or deny running the job that's likely to put the system over.

That's exactly what "return errors through the system call interface"
means - deny fork(), brk(), or mmap() if they go beyond the limit.

That's what the system used to be like, and it actually worked (and I
have used systems that were indeed pushed into thrashing hell - you
really don't want to be on a vax 780 with a (genuine, not contrived, or bug
caused) load overage over 100 - been there, done that, if I had a T-shirt
I'd destroy it, it isn't something to be proud of, a system spending 95%
of its cpu time doing context switching isn't very interesting...

But even there, when ram+swap was exhausted, things failed "gracefully"
rather than being blasted from orbit that we have now.

kre