Vm: Killing Processes

tbhebe · 03-06-2002, 07:18 AM

My server keeps returning a message that "vm: killing processes" This seems to be killing sendmail and some services and the machine is now terribly slow. I understand it maybe a memmory problem. But how can a solve this problem...?

jeremy · 03-06-2002, 08:41 AM

What kernel are you using and how much memory do you have? Could be the OOM killer.

--jeremy

baye · 03-07-2002, 04:11 AM

The Kernel I'm using is version 2.2.16-22 on a i686. The machine memory is 256Mb and my swap is 128Mb. What is the OOM Killer you are refering to?

jeremy · 03-07-2002, 09:51 AM

Running out of virtual memory is a bad thing. If it happens random proccesses will die. To avoid this the kernel will step and and try to kill proccess it thinks are unneccessay so that proccesses like init and kswapd are not effected.

http://linux-mm.org/docs/oom-killer.shtml

--jeremy