[Openmosix-devel] Disabling the oom killer

[David C. <dc...@jh...>]

Hi All,

This is somewhere between a question and suggestion....

Has anyone had any success getting openMosix.2.4.19.x or
2.4.20-2 to be stable under huge job load, huge memory load
without disabling the oom killer?

I know that I haven't.  With the oom killer turned on, I can pretty
dependably bring down my "head" node, by simply starting a
bunch of jobs that together use way more memory than the
head node has... both physical and swap.

With the oom killer turned off, things are much more stable.
I can still bring things to a miserable crawl, which resembles a
full crash, and might try my patience to the point where I just
reboot, but it is much, much harder to do with oom killer disabled.

Is the current recommendation/default to always disable
the oom killer?  If not, why not?

Cheers,
dave

David J. Cutler, Ph. D.
Institute of Genetic Medicine
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
600 N. Wolfe Street
Jefferson Street Building, Room 2-120
Baltimore, MD 21287
lab# (410) 502-7534
fax# (410) 502-7544
email: dc...@jh...