On 2009-01-13, David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:
quoted text
>
> When a memory-hogging task is identified, which you have complete control 
> over in userspace by tuning /proc/pid/oom_adj, it attempts to kill a child 
> first if it will allow for memory freeing without killing the parent.

So an alternative to Evgeniy Polyakov's patch would be:

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index d105eb4..5dcfc88 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -2311,10 +2311,19 @@ 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.
 
+Child processes will inherit the parent oom_score, so to launch a potential
+rouge process that you want to be the primary target of the oom-killer, that
+can be done by adjusting the score of the parent process, before launching the
+potential rouge process. F.ex. to make sure the process "Kenny" will be a
+prime candidate to get killed:
+
+       echo 15 > /proc/self/oom_adj
+       ./Kenny
+       echo -15 > /proc/self/oom_adj
+
 2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
 -------------------------------------------------------------
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer is for
 any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_adj to tune which
 process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.


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