mm: OOM documentation update

Signed-off-by: Evgeniy Polyakov <zbr@ioremap.net>
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 28 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index bbebc3a43ac0..a87be42f8211 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -2027,6 +2027,34 @@ increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer.  Valid
 values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables
 oom-killing altogether for this process.
 
+The process to be killed in an out-of-memory situation is selected among all others
+based on its badness score. This value equals the original memory size of the process
+and is then updated according to its CPU time (utime + stime) and the
+run time (uptime - start time). The longer it runs the smaller is the score.
+Badness score is divided by the square root of the CPU time and then by
+the double square root of the run time.
+
+Swapped out tasks are killed first. Half of each child's memory size is added to
+the parent's score if they do not share the same memory. Thus forking servers
+are the prime candidates to be killed. Having only one 'hungry' child will make
+parent less preferable than the child.
+
+/proc/<pid>/oom_score shows process' current badness score.
+
+The following heuristics are then applied:
+ * if the task was reniced, its score doubles
+ * superuser or direct hardware access tasks (CAP_SYS_ADMIN, CAP_SYS_RESOURCE
+        or CAP_SYS_RAWIO) have their score divided by 4
+ * if oom condition happened in one cpuset and checked task does not belong
+        to it, its score is divided by 8
+ * the resulting score is multiplied by two to the power of oom_adj, i.e.
+        points <<= oom_adj when it is positive and
+        points >>= -(oom_adj) otherwise
+
+The task with the highest badness score is then selected and its children
+are killed, process itself will be killed in an OOM situation when it does
+not have children or some of them disabled oom like described above.
+
 2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
 -------------------------------------------------------------