-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 16/07/10 11:29, Mark Hahn wrote:
> every distro I've seen leaves these at the default seting: > vm.overcommit_memory=0. this is basically the traditional > setting that tells the kernel to feel free to allocate way > too much memory, and to resolve memory crunches via OOM Looking at the kernel code if you set it vm.overcommit_memory to 0 (OVERCOMMIT_GUESS) then the kernel allows *each process* to allocate up to 97% of the total of RAM+swap (the last 3% is reserved for root, or processes with CAP_SYS_ADMIN). The catch is that (as highlighted) the limit is a per process one, not a system wide one. With it set to 1 (OVERCOMMIT_ALWAYS) there are no checks at all, it just returns 0 (OK) so any process can allocate as much as it wants, just that you don't know who or what will get OOM'd when you want to use it.. ;-) With 2 (OVERCOMMIT_NEVER) you can never specify more than your entire RAM+swap and the limit is applied across the system. We enforce RLIMIT_AS for MPI and single CPU processes by setting pvmem limits in Torque in the default queue. That doesn't work for SMP jobs so we have an 'smp' queue for then which sets mem= instead, this means that pbs_mom monitors the children and kills them if they go over their limits. cheers! Chris - -- Christopher Samuel - Senior Systems Administrator VLSCI - Victorian Life Sciences Computational Initiative Email: sam...@unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 (0)3 903 55545 http://www.vlsci.unimelb.edu.au/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkw/238ACgkQO2KABBYQAh88PQCfdmVZjYE2GznidzDNPOJ2zO6U DbIAnjKaviRyxIIsNVmsS3zfgbM0M7uZ =eLad -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf