Re: sbrk(2) broken

On 07/01/2008, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk_at_phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> In message <20080107095853.GR947_at_server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>, Peter Jeremy writes:
>
> >>This is a non-starter, if SIGDANGER is to have any effect, all
> >>processes that use malloc(3) should react to it.
> >
> >This depends on what SIGDANGER is supposed to indicate.  IMO, a single
> >signal is inadequate - you need a "free memory is less than desirable,
> >please reduce memory use if possible" and one (or maybe several levels
> >of) "memory is really short, if you're not important, please die".
>
> That's what I have been advocating for the last 10 years...

That makes the userland side of unnecessarily overcomplicated. If a
process handles SIGDANGER then let it do so and assume it's important
enough to be left alone, if a process doesn't handle SIGDANGER then
send SIGTERM to them then SIGKILL; but in any case SIGTERM *should*
precede SIGKILL - the processes ought to be allowed to terminate
gracefully.


Igor :-)