idea for running out of RAM

[Albert Cahalan]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:

> Did you continue down this path (auto-saving application state to NAND
> when we run out of memory)?  How tenable is the idea of saving
> application state to NAND on our system?
>
> Could the oom-killer have a hook to enable this functionality to be
> invoked instead of simply killing the application?

OOM is OOM. At that point, something needs to die.
There is no escape from the cold hard truth that, once
things have gone bad, it is too late for a good experience.

Saving state will tend to cause OOM. When software
does most anything, it needs memory. OOM is a particularly
bad time to be trying to save state. Don't go there.

The focus needs to be on prevention.

I welcome something better than RAM reservations, but
I'm not expecting anything better. IMHO, implementing
the best known option would be a good move.