Re: [PLUG] Why am I running out of memory?

[Tobias DiPasquale <toby@cbcg.net>]

On Mon, 2003-11-24 at 09:59, Walt Mankowski wrote:
> I still don't understand why the kernel's running out of memory.
> Can't a single process be larger than the amount of real memory?  Or
> is it because I'm trying to allocate such a big chunk of memory all at
> once?

A process can surely be larger than the amount of physical memory.
Unfortunately, since kernel memory is not pageable, it requires physical
memory. In certain places in the kernel, if a memory allocation fails,
it will call the OOM killer in an attempt to free up some memory. Since
you already have all of the physical memory on the system, this
allocation is failing and you are getting killed since you invariably
have the highest score (as far as the OOM killer is concerned). It has
little to do with the amount of virtual memory on the system, and more
to do with whether or not certain parts of the kernel can allocate
memory when it needs it.

-- 
Tobias DiPasquale, www.cbcg.net
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