Re: "Out of Memory: Killed process" errors on server running Oracle

[Eric Sisler <esisler westminster lib co us>]

Hi Gene,

>   Every 5-6 days I'm getting "Out of Memory: Killed process" messages
> on a Redhat AS 3 server running Oracle 9.20.  These errors will occur
> for a couple hours and will eventually lead to Oracle shutting down.
> The load on the server did increase recently, but there's still 1.8GB
> memory free on the system during these errors.
> 
>   The box is running the smp kernel.  Should I do something like
> increase the stack size or use the hugemem kernel?

Were you able to find a fix or workaround to this problem?  I'm seeing
the same thing on one of my VMware GSX/Server hosts.  This is apparently
related to the out of memory process killer on 2.6.x kernel series - in
some cases it appears to be a little too aggressive when memory gets
low.  The behavior of the OOM process killer also changed between the
2.4.x & 2.6.x kernels.  From a VMware KB article:

"...This problem results from a change in the way the Linux version 2.6
kernel’s OOM process killer works. In the version 2.4 kernel, the OOM
process killer killed the process that requested more memory than could
be provided. In version 2.6, this behavior changed so that the OOM
process killer kills the largest active process, regardless of the
process whose request exceeded available memory."

In my case it's the VM with the largest virtual memory that get's killed
when resources get tight.

I'm still researching possible solutions.

-Eric

-- 
Eric Sisler <esisler westminster lib co us>
Library Network Specialist
Westminster Public Library
Westminster, CO USA

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