The oom-killer stalks the land!

[hazel]

Something weird happened to me yesterday. I was updating Crux and a rather large library called mesa-3d was compiling. I left the computer for about half an hour and, when I got back, my desktop had been swept bare. All the apps I had left open were gone; only one xterm remained with the mesa build still chugging away inside it.

Of course I looked in /var/log/messages to find out what on earth had happened and I found that the kernel had unleashed a psychopathic stalker called oom-killer, which had systematically killed off all my processes. Even my pretty little barbarella buttonbars had gone, and they never hurt anyone in their lives!

According to Wikipedia, oom-killer is the kernel's bodyguard and enforcer; when the kernel fears it is running low on memory, it lets loose the oom-killer to sacrifice "unnecessary" processes. You can stop the oom-killer by modifying /etc/sysctl.conf but then you get kernel panics instead and everything crashes - not at all what you want when you're in the middle of a big compilation! So I suppose I shall just have to tolerate this sinister saboteur lurking inside my beloved Linux.

[curiousgirl]

I shall tell this story to my children (when or if I ever have them) around a campfire on a dark night in the woods someday.

[MASONTX]

Sounds like a sci-fi. Star ship Crux is cruising into the vast unknown, commanded by Colonel Mesa. They are carrying colonist to a new planet in a long voyage. Colonel Mesa becomes concerned that they will run short of resources such as food, water, and oxygen. The Colonel concludes that he must begin sacrificing non-essential personnel if they are to survive. He calls in his henchman Oom, and sets him to find and eliminate unnecessary personnel, that is colonists, not ships crew.

The colonists discover what is going on, but conclude that the only way to stop Oom is to mutiny and take over the ship.

Well, you get the idea. It would make a good yarn.

[MikeTbob]

Interesting Hazel, I have never heard of this before. Thanks for sharing. I looked at my /etc/sysctl.conf and everything is commented out and I didn't find any references to oom-killer specifically, but I did find this.

# Disables the magic-sysrq key
#kernel.sysrq = 0
# When the kernel panics, automatically reboot in 3 seconds
#kernel.panic = 3
# Allow for more PIDs (cool factor!); may break some programs
#kernel.pid_max = 999999

Is yours different?

[ryokimball]

Sounds like a sci-fi. Star ship Crux is cruising into the vast unknown, commanded by Colonel Mesa. They are carrying colonist to a new planet in a long voyage. Colonel Mesa becomes concerned that they will run short of resources such as food, water, and oxygen. The Colonel concludes that he must begin sacrificing non-essential personnel if they are to survive. He calls in his henchman Oom, and sets him to find and eliminate unnecessary personnel, that is colonists, not ships crew.

The colonists discover what is going on, but conclude that the only way to stop Oom is to mutiny and take over the ship.

Well, you get the idea. It would make a good yarn.

just had to give props Btw point of interest, once the mutiny is over and they colonists take over, they would become the ships crew --inherently safe from Oom anyway.

[hazel]

Interesting Hazel, I have never heard of this before. Thanks for sharing. I looked at my /etc/sysctl.conf and everything is commented out and I didn't find any references to oom-killer specifically, but I did find this.

# Disables the magic-sysrq key
#kernel.sysrq = 0
# When the kernel panics, automatically reboot in 3 seconds
#kernel.panic = 3
# Allow for more PIDs (cool factor!); may break some programs
#kernel.pid_max = 999999

Is yours different?

Actually my sysct.conf file has nothing in it but comments. But if you do want to disable the oom-killer, you need to enter " vm.oom-kill = 0". I haven't done this because I figure it's better to let some processes be killed than to let the kernel panic and kill the whole system. But why this happened - I don't think it has happened to me before - I have no idea.