kswapd killing critical processes

Hi all, 

Running Redhat 9 with a 2.4.26 kernel, but this happened with the stock kernel 
as well. Sometimes, we have users that run rather resource-intensive 
operations that get a bit out of control, creating huge memory footprints. 
When this happens, kswapd jumps in and starts killing off processes to 
recover swap space. This wouldn't normally be a problem except that, 
apparently, kswapd goes into "lunatic in the belltower" mode and kills off 
even critical processes like root shells on the console, sshd, and enough 
other stuff that you're eventually forced to reboot, which defeats kswapd's 
purpose for being in the first place. Has anyone seen this, and is there a 
way to get kswapd to NOT touch the root- or init-owned processes? 

brian.
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