[plug] USB drive mounting problems

[Andrew Furey]

> Would this explain a scenario I used to get on a server that was
> grotesquelly out of memory where I'd log in to check health and seemingly
> random processes where dead and the machine was maxed completely with vm
> and whatnot?
> 
> It sorta sounds kind of dangerous on a server, or is this an optional
> feature?

FWIW, recent 2.4 kernels say this in the help:

OOM killer support
CONFIG_OOM_KILLER
   This option selects the kernel behaviour during total out of memory
   condition.

   The default behaviour is to, as soon as no freeable memory and no swap
   space are available, kill the task which tries to allocate memory.
   The default behaviour is very reliable.

   If you select this option, as soon as no freeable memory is available,
   the kernel will try to select the "best" task to be killed.

   If unsure, say N.


Since chances are good that newly-spawned processes (rather than
existing daemons) will be the first to ask for memory, the default
seems to make sense. But, IANA kernel hacker...

Andrew

-- 
Linux supports the notion of a command line or a shell for the same
reason that only children read books with only pictures in them.
Language, be it English or something else, is the only tool flexible
enough to accomplish a sufficiently broad range of tasks.
                          -- Bill Garrett