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Re: problem: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed



Am Don, dem 22.November 2001, um 05:27:32 -0800, schrieb Erik Steffl:
> 
>   usually it kills more programs, system services (cron) etc... I have
> few question related to this problem:
> 
>   - is it possible it's kernel problem? I haven't heard anything too
> weird about 2.4.10

well, 2.4.10 is quite bad at deciding which process to kill. you should
use 2.4.14 or even better 2.4.15pre9 (which seems to become 2.4.15).

>   - how can I find (post mortem) which program caused the problem?

i don't think there is a way (except, of course, heavy logging).

>   - how does kernel decide which programs to kill? is there any way to
> influence it? I would rather have netscape (usually a memory hog) killed
> than system services (like samba daemons, cron, nfs daemons etc.)

the kernel uses some heuristics (which have been sane only since
2.4.14). unfortunately you don't have a way to tweak the behaviour.
usually the kernel chooses the process which uses the most memory (and
won't free any in a low memeory situation).

i suppose it would be best to upgrade the kernel and then try to
reproduce the problem. chances aren't that bad that it is way better.

> 
>   related incident: I have quite a few mp3 files and I noticed that when
> I sort playlist in xmms by song name it eats all available memory (and
> does the same after I restart it, I didn't even find any relevant
> setting in config file but when I remove it problem goes away). I have't
> tried it before so I don't know whether it's new problem or old one (I
> haven't find anything similar on xmms or debian page so I filed a bug
> report)

can't help you with that though.

bye,
  Sebastian



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