killed: out of swap

[Edgar Fuß <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>]

I have a program that keeps malloc()ing (and scribbling a bit into the 
allocated memory) until malloc() fails. The intention is to put pressure 
on the VM system to find out how much pool cache memory it can reclaim.

When I run that program (with swap space unconfigured), it doesn't terminate 
normally, but gets killed by the kernel with "out of swap". Unfortunately, 
other processes happening to malloc() during that time may get killed, too.

I don't quite get what the rationale for that is (or maybe I'm doing 
something stupidely wrong). If I malloc(), and that fails, that should fail 
and not kill me, no?

I'm surely missing something.