Re: offline elfutils processing committed

["Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche at redhat dot com>]

Hi -

hunt wrote:

> [...]  What happens when systemtap's allocations succeed, but leave
> the system in a low memory state such that other applications
> trigger the oom killer when they try to allocate memory.  In this
> case, we want staprun and the systemtap module to be first to be
> killed. [...]

Since the systemtap module rather than staprun owns most of the
memory, and because by its nature the module reacts relatively slowly
to staprun's demise, biasing staprun for OOM targeting may not
meaningfully assist the system in a time of need.

Also, preferring to kill staprun/etc. under such conditions is not
obviously correct.  One might argue that once a systemtap script is
running, it deserves to be kept alive no less than any other process:
it may be running precisely because the sysadmin wanted to monitor the
system.  Heck, it might be in the middle of debugging excessive memory
consumption problems.

- FChE