On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, John Nemeth wrote:

>      On one system I administrate, the largest process is typically
> rpc.nisd (the NIS+ server daemon).  Killing that process would be a
> bad thing (TM).  You're talking about killing random processes.  This
> is no way to run a system.  It is not possible for any arbitrary
> decision to always hit the correct process.  That is a decision that
> must be made by a competent admin.  This is the biggest argument
> against overcommit:  there is no way to gracefully recover from an
> out of memory situation, and that makes for an unreliable system.

$DEITY on a pogo stick, how many times do we have to hear the same
hypothetical argument?

Tell me, Mr. Nemeth, has this ever happened to you?  Have you ever come
*close*?

--
 Ben

UNIX Systems Engineer, Skunk Group
StarMedia Network, Inc.