shrinking memory consumptions

[Marcelo Tosatti]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 08:34:51AM +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> On 4/3/07, Adam Jackson <ajackson at redhat.com> wrote:
> >If you do get back to this, please make it a file, not a signal.  Signal
> >handling is enough of a nightmare intrinsically, and most apps also get
> 
> Yep, it is hard to do because you have to handle it immediately. If
> it's a file you can defer it until you get out of that memory-eating
> loops that's keeping you busy right now... and OOM'ing the box. :-)
> 
> If that's the case, doing it via signals is the right thing to do, and
> it _is_ hard. Moving it to a pollable mechanism makes it easier, and
> of very limited use -- ie: only when your app is idle.

Thats right - a downside of using files is that the decision of reading
the file moves down to the application, whereas a signal is an urgent
mechanism (surely processes can ignore the signal, but that should give
negative points for them when making the OOM kill decision).

OTOH Adam's point that what can be done inside signal handlers is
limited is a good one.

> Or perhaps I am completely misunderstanding.
> 
> 
> martin