Re: Problem with swapping - computer crash.

[Lehel Bernadt <blehel@kabelkon.ro>]

On 12-Aug-2000 Marko Cehaja wrote:
(...)
> What happens by default when all memory and swap file is exhausted?
> I would like to know that. Must it be that system crashes or that
> it denies every use of my computer?

At first, nothing. But when a daemon or other running program tries to malloc
some memory, will die horribly because 'memory exhausted' errors are fatal ones,
and the program can do nothing but exit. And when this happens to vital programs
like syslogd, getty or init you don't have much choice.
One solution could be enforcing some user limits with PAM. This way only
processes owned by you will be at risk.