Re: Locking processes against being killed when low on memory

[Gary Thorpe <gathorpe79%yahoo.com@localhost>]

--- Stephen Borrill <netbsd%precedence.co.uk@localhost> wrote:

> I'm using NetBSD 4.0 with Xorg, etc. running from flash, i.e. no
> swap. As 
> it's embedded, everything is running as root. Is there any way to tag
> 
> processes as unkillable when running out of memory? Some processes
> (e.g. 
> the X server, management daemon and session manager) need to remain 
> running throughout. I don't mind if other things such as web-browsers
> get 
> killed. Currently bad things happen when it starts to run out of
> RAM...
> 
> -- 
> Stephen

I don't think NetBSD has an "out-of-memory" killer (as in Linux?): I
think the application which causes the unserviceable page fault is just
killed. If I am not mistaken in this, you cannot predict beforehand
which applications will be targeted (this includes 'init') because any
of them may try to access over-committed memory. Maybe you could try
'ulimit' to make sure the memory usage is contained? This may be
feasible for an embedded system (or maybe not).


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