[adavies42]

then there's over-commit, e.g. "you want to malloc 200% of the ram? here you go! enjoy! oh wait, you wrote to the second half? have fun finding the power button, sucker!"

can someone explain to me why so many distros, including "enterprise" server stuff, ship with /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory set to 1?

[aliguori]

Most software cannot cope with malloc failing. A little swapping is at least recoverable. A failed malloc almost guarantees that your application will crash--sometimes in a very unpleasant way.

[adavies42]

ime the main alternative is the box crashing, frequently without leaving behind enough information to know what went wrong. at least if the app crashes you have a pretty good idea who was incompetent.