Subject: Is writing to om_adj important ?
From: Declan Mullen <declan@jadplace.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:25:02 +1100

Hi

When I ssh into my Linux server, the login succeeds but I notice that I 
get the following type of entry appended to the auth.log :

    Jan 26 17:10:45 maxv1 sshd[32624]: error writing /proc/self/oom_adj: 
Permission denied

What are the implications of the sshd not being able to write to the 
oom_adj ? Ie Is this error significant or should I just ignore it ?

The sshd's write is failing because the server I'm logging into is a 
VServer guest/virtual server, and the VServer virtualisation technology 
places restrictions on what can be written to the /proc filesystem from 
within the guest.

The guest server OS is Debian Lenny and the sshd versions is 
"1:5.1p1-5". Within the sshd_config Privilege Separation is turned on.

The host server's kernel is Lenny's "linux-source-2.6.26" (version 
"2.6.26-13") with Lenny's vserver patches applied from 
"linux-patch-debian-2.6.26" (version "2.6.26-13"). The host's 
util-vserver package is version "0.30.216~r2772-6". The host's
"vserver-debiantools" package is version "0.6.3".

Many thanks,
Declan