Re:Swap, swap, swap, and bad places to work
by dreamcompiler on Friday August 09, 2019 @04:36PM
(#20658058)
This is an example of where desktop and server engineers could benefit from having embedded design experience.
It's certainly possible to create a small, protected area of memory that contains a kernel-level interrupt handler (which itself allocates no memory) whose sole job is to run a couple of times a second and check for thrashing and OOM. If it sees memory problems, it takes over the computer, determines which processes are using the most memory and kills the ones that are expendable. ("Expendable" is a list configurable by the user and yeah, Chrome would be right at the top for a desktop system.)
Embedded systems designers routinely build such watchdogs into their systems. It could probably be added to Linux as a kernel patch.
It's certainly possible to create a small, protected area of memory that contains a kernel-level interrupt handler (which itself allocates no memory) whose sole job is to run a couple of times a second and check for thrashing and OOM. If it sees memory problems, it takes over the computer, determines which processes are using the most memory and kills the ones that are expendable. ("Expendable" is a list configurable by the user and yeah, Chrome would be right at the top for a desktop system.)
Embedded systems designers routinely build such watchdogs into their systems. It could probably be added to Linux as a kernel patch.