On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 02:35:29PM +1000, Peter Hardy wrote:
> Not really a problem, just something I've been wondering.
>
> So, when Linux runs out of memory (physical RAM and swap exhausted), it
> starts killing processes to free up space. How does the kernel decide
> what to terminate? Does it start with the ones taking the most space?
> The least space? Is there some strategy to free only as much as it
> needs, with a minimum number of terminated threads? Or is it just
> random?
This seems to give a good explanation:
http://linux-mm.org/docs/oom-killer.shtml
Also, I seem to recall it is a topic that has come up frequently in
Kernel Traffic (http://kt.zork.net) over the last 12 months or so, so
you might like to search its archives if you want to know more.
-Andrew.
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