On 02.05.02 Torsten Werner (twerner@intercomm.de) wrote:
Außerdem gab es mit 2.0.x noch memory overcommit for free. Die gute alte Zeit! ;-)
Und heute?:
drachi:[hille] >more +1102 /usr/src/linux-2.4.18/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt| head -n 14 overcommit_memory -----------------
This file contains one value. The following algorithm is used to decide if there's enough memory: if the value of overcommit_memory is positive, then there's always enough memory. This is a useful feature, since programs often malloc() huge amounts of memory 'just in case', while they only use a small part of it. Leaving this value at 0 will lead to the failure of such a huge malloc(), when in fact the system has enough memory for the program to run.
On the other hand, enabling this feature can cause you to run out of memory and thrash the system to death, so large and/or important servers will want to set this value to 0.
Kernel 2.4.18 -- untestet.
H.