desktop entry proposal: TerminateSafe=true key

[Colin Walters]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Lennart Poettering <mzkqt at 0pointer.de> wrote:
>
> Well, the OOM killer kills processes at its descretion, and it doesn't
> look into the desktop file of the process before doing that... ;-)

Yes; the current Linux OOM killer is stupid; it arises from a lack of
vertical integration in our software stack.

> And, as it turns out the kernel already has a per-process setting that
> allows you to adjust your likeliness of being killed first by the OOM
> killer. You can change it via writing to /proc/self/oom_adj.

Sure; the way I think this should work is that userspace is actively
involved in preventing the last-ditch Linux OOM killer from being
invoked; for example the desktop shell could simply kill TerminateSafe
applications if it gets a low-memory signal from the kernel.

> Which makes me wondering: how does your suggestion relate to the kernel
> setting, and why should a developer fiddle with your setting instead of
> the kernel setting?

The likelihood of your app being killed via oom_adj is orthogonal to
letting the operating system know that it's safe to kill your app,
because it's not going to lose user data.