Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init

[Roger Gammans]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 02:54:55AM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Szabolcs Szakacsits wrote:
> >  - trying to kill a task that is permanently in TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE
> >    will probably deadlock the machine [or the random OOM killer will
> >    kill the box].
> 
> This could indeed be a problem, though I cannot really see any
> case where a task would be in TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE permanently.

I've seen this with 'mt rewind' jamming on ide-tape. I'm
not sure of the exact pathology , but ISTR that it
was related issuing that command while the hardware was busy.

In any case the point is that a badly written driver or faulty
h/w even in a subsiduary system can cause this.

In an ideal world of course these wouldn't happen, but OTOH
is this an issue in failing a box which is going to fail
anyway if we don't kill the process. If we could ensure
a graceful failure so much the better.

TTFN
-- 
Roger
     Think of the mess on the carpet. Sensible people do all their
     demon-summoning in the garage, which you can just hose down afterwards.
        --     [e-mail]