Re: posible bug in daemontools

Jurjen Oskam wrote:

> If you're referring to the patch Paul Jarc proposed a few years ago in
> response to a problem I reported: you're right that it wasn't on a Linux
> box (it was on AIX).

Yup, that was the one.

> (That platform certainly *does* have an OOM killer BTW,
> and (in hindsight) it has caused problems earlier with supervised services.
> But that's not really relevant for this particular discussion.)

It does?  I've used AIX (from 3.2.5? to 5.2/5.3) for years and never hit this
condition (not doubting you, just something I'd never noticed/ran into before).

> Before AIX starts killing processes, the fork function will start to fail.

This I'd expect (ENOMEM is a valid error from fork()).

> I think the OOM situation is just the way the problem was discovered, the
> problem being that a failed fork is never retried and the service remains
> in "want up" state. A failing fork can happen under other cicumstances than
> an OOM situation, so I would consider (FWIW) that something that should be
> fixed.

Definitely agreed, which is why I think talk of the ignoring the problem
because it's all OOM killer's fault is a red herring.  I've certainly
added it to my patch list.


-- 
Regards,
  Daryl Tester

Member of the Amalgamated Australian Association Against Apostrophe Abuse.
(formerly the 6A's - no, wait ...).